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A RACE WITH THE SUN 



A SIXTEEN MONTHS' TOUR FROM CHICAGO AROUND THE WORLD 
THROUGH MANITOBA AND BRITISH COLUMBIA BY THE CA- 
NADIAN PACIFIC — OREGON AND WASHINGTON — JAPAN- 
CHINA — SIAM — STRAITS SETTLEMENTS — BURMAH — 
INDIA — CEYLON — EGYPT— GREECE— TURKEY— ROU- 
MANIA — HUNGARY— AUSTRIA— POLAND— TRANS- 
CAUCASIA— THE CASPIAN SEA AND THE VOL- 
GA RIVER— RUSSIA— FINLAND— SWEDEN- 
NORWAY — DENMARK — PRUSSIA — 
PARIS — LONDON AND HOME 



CARTER H. HARRISON 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

CHICAGO: 
W. E. DIBBLE & CO. 



10780 



COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 










4 1898 



TWOuOricoHtCtlVED. 



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2nd 



Ube IRnicftetbocfter presa 

Electrotyped and Printed by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 



PREFACE. 



In the summer of 1887, having laid aside the cares of pubHc 
office continuously filled during fifteen and a half years, and 
having met with a sad bereavement which nearly snapped heart- 
strings, the writer, for the purpose of bridging the chasm lying 
between a laborious past and what he hoped might be a restful 
future, started upon a tour of the world. For his companions he 
had John W. Amberg, the son of a trusted friend, and his own 
son William Preston Harrison, aged respectively seventeen and 
eighteen years. 

On the eve of his departure two editorial friends urged him 
to write letters on his travels for their papers. Recognizing 
the dangerous effects of easy idleness after a life of labor, he had 
already determined to keep for his children a full and complete 
traveller's book. As an experiment he commenced this in mani- 
fold and in form of letters. His first letters being very kindly 
received, he continued them, though forced to steal the time for 
writing, and oftentimes finding the thing an onerous labor. But 
this labor soon became one of love. What he saw he described 
honestly, and gave his thoughts freely, hoping to make his 
friends at home partakers of his happiness. After returning 
many friends urged him to put his letters into book form. 
To do this required more labor than the original writing, for he 
had, for the sake of economy of space, to cut out much, while yet 
maintaining the epistolary style. He makes no pretensions to 
literary merit, but asks from the public the same kindliness in 
reading his letters, which he has felt in writing for them. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Start— Winnipeg and Manitoba — The Canadian Pacific Railroad — Scenery 

in the Rockies and the Selkirlcs, and on the Fraser River . . . . i 

CHAPTER II. 

Tiniber — Productions and Peculiarities of Oregon and Washington — Forest Fires 

and Smoke — Scenery of the Columbia ........ lo 

CHAPTER III. 

More about Washington — Victoria and Vancouver's Island ..... l6 

CHAPTER IV. 

Soil and Climate of the Northwestern Pacific Slope — Victoria and Esquimault — 

Green River Hot Springs, and Trout . . . . . , • 19 

CHAPTER V. 

A Run Back into the Selkirks on a Locomotive — Glaciers and Avalanches — 

Siamese Princes — Scenery at Glacier House ....... 24 

CHAPTER VI. 

From Vancouver to Yokohama — An Ocean Voyage Likened to the Voyage of 
Life — The Risks of the Sea — Stormy Passage — A Typhoon — Plucky Japanese 
Sailors — Our Mishaps and Recoveries ........ 29 

CHAPTER VII. 

Beautiful and Bizarre Japan — Its Cheerful Men and Modest Immodest Women — 

Its Mechanics and Babies, Houses and Cities ...... 41 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Rivers, Farms, and Farmers of Japan — Further Characteristics of its People — 

Its Hotels, Food, and Flowers . . . . . . -55 

CHAPTER IX. 

Speculations upon Japan — Great Dykes and Walls — Liliputian Trees — Female 

Education . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Honor to Perry — The Mikado Formerly a God ; Now a Wise Ruler — Rapid 

Progress — Good Police — Good Roads — A Thought of Mother — Farm Houses, 71 

CHAPTER XI. 

Temples and Gods — Tokio : its Castle and Dense Population — Easy-going 
Tradesmen — Beauty of the Young and Ugliness of Old Women — Prostitution 
—Fish .78 

CHAPTER Xn. 

Beauty of Japanese Scenery — Terraced P'arms — The Inland Sea and Nagasaki — 
Missionaries — Cheerfulness of Native Workers — ^Sweet but Sad Thoughts on 
Quitting Japan . . . . ,. . . . . ' . . .87 

CHAPTER Xni. 

Yang-Tse-Kiang — Chinese Farming — Fish and Modes of Catching — Appearance 

of the Country — Missionaries, Catholic and Protestant . . . . . 100 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Chinese Cities, Houses, Temples, and Workshops — Cat and Dog Roasts — Float- 
ing Population of Canton — Flower Boats — Women Boatmen — Susan . .111 

CHAPTER XV. 

Siam — Rich Soil — Vast Forests of Timber — Bangkok — Vultures Eating the Dead 

-A Cremation — Audience with the King — Siamese Theatre . . .130 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Singapore — Botanical Garden — A Sail through the Rhio-Linga Archipelago — Its 

Exquisite Beauty — Chicago Island — The Equator ..... 149 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Burmah — Pagodas — Working Elephants — The Irrawaddy River — Pagahn v/ith 

9,999 Pagodas — Mandalay — Exquisite Edifices — The Burmese . . . 161 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

'The Hooghly — Calcutta — Mount Everest — A Wonderful Railroad — A Dinner 

with Lord Dufferin, and a State Ball ........ 178 

CHAPTER XIX. 

(Calcutta to Benares — The Holy City and Pilgrims — Sacred Bathing and Burning 

.Corpses — Sarnath and Buddhism — Lucknow and Cawnpore .... 192. 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGE 

Lahore to Peshawur — Central Asiatics — Western Himalayas — Cashmir — A Wild 

Ride 202 

CHAPTER XXI. 

India's Vast Past — A Glorious Modern Deed — Delhi and Agra — Exquisite Halls 

and Tombs — The Taj — Reflections ........ 213 

CHAPTER XXn. 

Remarkable Mountains — A Model Native City — Monkeys and Peacocks — Old 

Amber — A Ride on an Elephant — Crocodiles ...... 227 

CHAPTER XXni. 

Ahmedabad — Beautiful Saracenic Remains — Wood-Carving — Purchasing Sha^\•ls — 
Native Diplomacy — Bombay — Towers of Silence — Elephanta — The 15th of 
February ............. 235 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Across the Deccan — Karli Caves — P>eautifui Women — Hyderabad — -Old Golconda 

—Titanic Rocks — Elephant Ride — Charming Hospitality .... 248 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Tuticorin — Pondicherry — Tanjore — Trichinopoly and Madura — Hindoo Temples 

— A Delightful Ride — Natives and their Dress ...... 260 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Ceylon — The Cocoa Palm fhe People's Friend — Tea, Coffee, and Cinchonas — 
Charming Mountain Retreat — English Rule in India — Strictures on the 
Englishman's Manners .......... 269 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Cities beneath the Indian Ocean — The Red Sea and its Suggestions — Singular 

Weather^Suez Canal ........... 285 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

An April Trip up the Nile — Delightful Climate — Cairo Old and New — Arabic 

Tombs — Good Friday — Boolak Museum — Mother and Babe 3,000 Years Old, 289 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Nile — Old and New Egypt — Egyptian Houses — The Plodding Donkey — 

Forbidden Fruits — Egyptian Farms — Headers from an Ass .... 299 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Dr. Schliemann — Thebes : its Temples.and Tombs — Beautiful Picture-Writing — 

A Native Feast ............ 30S 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

PAGE 

Grecian Sky Coloring- — Feelings Awakened by Athens — Rich Art Treasures 
Constantly Exhumed — The Future of Greece — Corinth — Earthquakes — A 
Wonderful Sunset — Farewell, Greece . . . . . . . .317 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Cosmopolitan Constantinople • — ■ Beautiful Approach — Custom-house — Solomon 
and his Tribe — Dogs — St. Sophia— Bazaars — The Salaam-lick — The Timid 
Sultan — Dervishes — The Eosphorus — Wonderful Panorama .... 329 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The Bosphorus — Across Bulgaria — Bucharest — Roumania : its People, Appear- 
ance, and Productions ........... 347 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Scenery on Lower Danube — Buda-Pesth — Beautiful Women — Marguerite Island 

— Hungarian Derby . . . . . . . . . . .355 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Vienna — Taxes — The Vice of Lottery — Austrian Derby — Tips — Ring Strasse — 

Museums — Environs ........... 364 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Run to Moscow — Warsaw — The Poles— Sobieski's Palace — Peasants . . . 374 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Moscow — The Russo-Greek Church — Devotion of the People — Russian Tea — 

Restaurants — The Kremlin — Bells — Palaces ....... 382 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Princely Kindness — Rich Prairie Lands — Veronij — Necessity for Forest Protection 
— The Cossacks — Brave Children — Sunflower the Russian Nibble — Rostof on 
the Don ............. 394 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Vladikavkaz — Grand Views of the Caucasus — A Glorious Trip — Flowers — Fruit — 

Tiflis Pretty and Interesting ......... 403 

CHAPTER XL. 

The Caspian Sea — Baku and its Marvellous Oil Wells — Petroleum as a Fuel — 

Balakhana — A Burning Sea — Natural Gas . . . . . . .417 

CHAPTER XLI. 

The Volga River and Mighty Traffic — Astrakhan — Kazan — Nijni Novgorod — 

Rafts— The People— The Great Fair 429 



CONTENTS. xi 

CHAPTER XLII. 

PAGE 

From Nijni to RybinsTc by River ; Then by Rail to St. Petersburg — Peterhof : 

its Beautiful Fountains — The Meeting of the Emperors .... 443 

CHAPTER XLin. 

St. Petersburg — Politeness and Good Nature of the Russians — Superb Galleries — 
Hermitage — Winter Palace — Winter Revelry — St. Isaac's Church — Illumina- 
tion at Peterhof ............ 453 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

Finland — An Interesting Country — The Finns — Tornea — Midnight within the 
Arctic Circle — Posting — Farming — The Relations of the. Russians with their 
Conquered Subjects ........... 469 

CHAPTER XLV. 

Sail to Sweden— Princely Fellow Voyagers — Stockholm — The Swedes — Home-like 

Landscapes ............. 490 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

Norway — Magnificent Scenerj- — Trustful People — Pleasing Simplicity — Pretty 

Log-houses — Farming in Norway — Glaciers and Water-falls . . . 499 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

Christiania — Viking Ships — Tlielemarken — The Fiords — Climate of Norway — 

Splendid Roads — Delightful Tours — Mountain Dairies .... 509 

CHAPTER XLVni. 

Copenhagen — ^Thorwaldsen — Fredericksborg — Thrifty Danes — Run to Berlin — 

Berlin in 1S52 and Now — Reflections ........ 521 

CHAPTER XLIX. ' 

A Lunch " en famille " with Bismarck — Charming Hospitality — Kindliness of the 

Prince — Autographs and Photographs ........ 534 

CHAPTER L. 

Hamburg — An Interesting City — Quaint Hanover — Lean-to Old Houses — Run to 

Frankfort — The Rhine .......... 546 

CHAPTER LI. 

Wonderful, Fascinating Paris — Improvements of the Empire— ^Recollections of 

December, 1851 — Markets of Paris . . . . . . . -552 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER LII. 

PAGE 

London, Great and Vicious London — Its Fogs — Hospitality in 1851 and i388 — 

Tortworth Court and Berkeley Castle ........ 561 

CHAPTER LIH. 
Our Home Run — Niagara — We Lose the Race with tha Sun .... 566 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Benares . 



The Great Selkirk Glacier, Glacier House. Canadian Pacific 

Railway . . . . . . . . . . Frotiispiece 

Hermit Range, Rocky Mountains, with Canadian Pacific R. R. Station, 2 

The Chancellor, Otter Tail Range, Rocky Mountains. Canadian 
Pacific Railway 

Avalanche Shed, Selkirk Mountains. Canadian Pacific Railway 

Glacier House and Great Glacier. Canadian Pacific Railway 

Hermit INIountain, Rogers" Pass. Canadian Pacific Railway 

Gigantic Cedars (53 Feet in Circumference), Stanley Park, Vancouver, 
British Columbia .... 

Douglass Firs, Vancouver, British Columbia 

A Part of Japanese Temple, Nikko, Japan 

Fuji-Yama, from the Tokaido 

Old Stone Images, near Nikko, Japan 

Wat-Se-Kat Pagoda, Bangkok 

Burmese Ladies at Tea antd Smoking . 

Loop on the Darjeeling Railroad 

Corpse in Ganges and Cremation on the Bank, 

Indian Women with Fuel made of Manure 

The Taj from the River, Agra . 

Parsee Towtir of Silence, Bombay 

Group of Hill People of Central India 

Gopuras of Hindoo Temple, Madura . 

Talipot Palm in Bloom, Ceylon . 

India-Rubber Trees, Paredeniya Garden, Ceylon 

Catamaran Fishing-Boat with Outrigger, Ceylon . 

A Banyan Tree Straddling a Road, Ceylon 

Ramesses II., Nineteenth Dynasty, known as Sesostris 

Section of Old Wall, Constantinople 

The Kremlin, Moscow 

Mount Kazbek from Station in Caucasus Mountains 

Russian "Troika" 

Stabbur and Woman Churning, Haulid Jaeter, in Thelemarken 

Flatdal, from Aasetraekene, in the Thelemarken, Norway 

HiTTERDAL Church, Thelemarken ..... 

xiii 



26 
8g 
88 
92 
136 
170 
1 84 
196 
204 
222 
242 
250 
262 
268 
272 
274 
276 
296 
344 
390 
406 
466 
504 
5" 
512 



A RACE WITH THE SUN. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE START— WINNIPEG AND MANITOBA— THE CANADIAN PACIFIC 

RAILROAD— SCENERY IN THE ROCKIES, THE SELKIRKS 

AND ON THE ERASER RIVER. 

Victoria, British Columbia^ August 3, 1887. 

Having resolved to make a race with the sun, around the world, 
it became a matter of some moment the choice of route we should 
pursue. We recognized the fact that Old Sol moved on a smooth 
and beaten track. For countless eons he had moved majestically 
along the same even road. No ups and downs ; no stations 
where he has to stop to take food or water ; comets feed his 
fiery chargers ; their tails, whisking around millions of miles, fan 
their foaming flanks ; worn-out worlds drop into their mangers to 
feed them., without the necessity of a halt ; asteroids and bursting 
meteors furnish their driver with whip-cracks with which to en- 
courage them to maintain their speed ; their own fiery nostrils 
light them along their trackless path. Countless millions of ages 
ago the mighty Eternal awoke them from their beginningless 
sleep when His fiat, " Let there be light," reverberating through- 
out chaotic space, and rolling through its dark chasms and caves, 
echoed from its frowning crags, caught and returned from limit- 
less heights, was obeyed, and " Light was." Their next rest will 
be when comes a crash of worlds, and the same Eternal shall 
shout, in wrathful thunder, " It is ended." 

Ours was an unequal task. We knew we would be handicapped, 
not only from day to day, but from hour to hour ; we would have 
mountains to climb, valleys to span, oceans to cross, and storms 
and tempests to turn us from our road. We would have to pick 
our course through countless obstacles by day, and to feel our 
way among countless dangers by night. Knowing our rival would 
be forced to travel a thousand miles an hour within the tropics, 
we determined to go far to the north, where contracted degrees 
would reduce our mileage to nearly half of the tropical distance. 

We therefore left Chicago for northern Manitoba. We ran 
through wooded Wisconsin, rested a few hours at ambitious St. 



2 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Paul, dashed through the great grain fields of northern Minne- 
sota, entered the dominions of her much-jubileed Majesty, and 
started on our race at high-boomed Winnipeg, on the 50th degree, 
north latitude. 

By the way, the " boom " at the capital of Manitoba was not, 
as many have thought, a bursting " bomb." It is a well laid out 
and handsome city of 23,000 souls. The boom gave it a good 
start, and, like the great Chicago fire, made many a rich speculator 
bite financial dust, but left improvements, which, but for the spec- 
ulative fever, would not have been commenced for years to come. 
The city has many fineprivate buildings, a beautiful city hall, three 
elegant fire-engine houses, several well paved streets, and a mill 
which turns out 900 barrels of flour daily. The people resemble, 
in dress and movements, the thriving, bustling population of our 
northwestern States much more than they do the self-satisfied and 
slow-looking Canucks of Ontario and eastern Canada. At night 
they walked about with pleasure-seeking energy, rather than 
the listless, slow, aimless step of those we see along the railroads 
which run among their brothers of the east. 

Manitoba, — by the way, they lay the accent upon the " o " in- 
stead of on the final " a," though I suspect it to be wrong, for I 
was told the compound word is " Manito " " ba " (God speaks), 
from the Indian idea that the thunder is louder here than elsewhere, 
— Manitoba is a grand province. From the United States bound- 
ary, stretching north and south about 150 miles, by 120 miles east 
and west, it is a splendid small-grain country. The land is not held 
by great individual owners or by syndicates, but in small holdings, 
rarely larger than a section, and generally only a half. The farms 
are better cultivated than in Minnesota. The fields are much freer 
from weeds, and the crops better than any thing we saw on our 
way in the States, except in a small section near Crookston. We 
were -told the expectation was for an average crop of 25 bushels to 
the acre. Some fields, we thought, in passing, would nearly 
touch 40. At Winnipeg we boarded the Canadian Pacific. 
For a considerable distance the country is perfectly flat, with a 
soil of great depth ; ditches will make it all finely arable. From 
Portage La Prairie westward the surface is undulating, often high- 
rolling, and for 109 miles to Virden is as beautiful prairie as one 
could wish to see. North and south in this belt the same charac- 
teristics, we were told by a well-informed gentleman, extended 
from the United States line to the northern limits of the province. 

What cunning chaps the Hudson Bay Company people were ! 
For long years they told the world that this was a region only fit 
for fur-bearing animals. But now, since the iron horse has 
snatched the reins from this great cormorant, we find this mighty 
northwest a country capable of supporting millions of happy 
agricultural people. Rivers abound, running in deep-cut banks, 
into which the lowest and flattest land can be drained. Wood is 



IN MANITOBA. 3 

not so far off that it cannot be had in sufficient quantities for domes- 
tic purposes, and coal-fields lie so close to the rivers that coal can 
be transported by water if the rail fails to do the work. In the 
summer season the sun pours down a flood of heat. The nights 
are cool now, and v/e were told are always so. Years ago, when 
the American cry was " 54° 40', or fight," I was a Whig, and 
twitted the Democrats for coming down to 49°. I now feel like 
still twitting my old Democratic brethren of the past for not 
standing up for 54° 40'. I am not very acquisitive of territory 
for our country, but I confess to a strong feeling that Uncle Sam 
ought to own from the Superior up to Alaska and on to the Pa- 
cific. Let it not be understood that we would do any better for 
the people than the Dominion is doing. They are thriving, and 
the Canadian Pacific Company has built a road which none- of our 
transcontinental railroads can surpass. It is thoroughly laid, 
smooth, and finely ballasted. The depots or stations are built 
with taste, and bridges are erected with great strength. In the 
far west experimental farms are worked so as to give the emigrant 
actual knowledge of what the soil is capable of producing. 

After leaving Virden the country assumes less of a prairie ap- 
pearance and more that of a western plain, but sage-brush does 
not commence for a long distance, and, in fact, is light at any 
point on the road. Some 200 miles were passed by us at 
night when we were generally asleep, but occasionally I would 
look from my window, and was thus able to make a tolerably 
accurate survey. The twilight of this latitude is so long that the 
traveller is enabled to see much which in more southern climes 
would be lost in darkness. We left Winnipeg at 9:40 A.M., on 
the 29th. Early on the 30th we were constantly at the windows 
or on the platform. Indians were occasionally seen at the sta- 
tions, decked in bright-colored blankets, and with faces painted 
as heavily as those of watering-place belles. Their " tepees " (tents) 
could be seen near by in groups of from four to ten. They all 
had for sale horns of their old friend, the buffalo. Cattle ranches 
are scattered over the country. Habitations, however, as we ran 
westward, became scarce and ranches fewer. Many lakes were 
passed covered with geese and duck. Sometimes we could see 
young broods of the latter, of the size of quail, on small streams 
not over twenty feet from our train. The plain was now the 
" coteau de Missouri," but not arid as the same plain is on the 
Northern Pacific road. The whole country is pleasantly green 
with patches of " down " diversifying the landscape. Occasionally 
we would see lakes with edges white with alkali running into 
purple water-weed. Several of the small alkali ponds were dried 
up and looked like plats of driven snow. The grass is short but 
thick, and is of the prairie kind, with a variety resembling buffalo 
grass intermixed. Frequently for long stretches we would pass 
among bush openings, which gave a park-like appearance to the 



4 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

plain. Several of the towns have from 400 to 800 inhabitants. 
Two hundred and odd miles west of Winnipeg, at a village named 
Moosomin, we saw a lawn-tennis party and a couple of nickel-plated 
bicycles ridden by ambitious young men, this too in the territory 
of Assiniboia, north of western Dakota. 

All through the ride on the 30th we were in the region where 
buffalo formerly abounded. Hundreds upon hundreds of their 
old trails were deep furrowed into the prairie, crossing the road 
from south to north. What countless thousands must, year after 
year, have trodden in these furrows to have worn them so deep 
into the dry hard soil. Now and then their bones would fleck 
the prairie in white patches, and at the stations tons were ready 
in huge piles for shipment east, to make handles for tooth-brushes 
and bone-dust for soda fountains. It was sad to think of the vast 
numbers of these old monarchs of the plains which had been 
slaughtered in mad love for killing. The poor Indians, relics of 
former ages, who are now living upon the bounty of the conquer- 
ing whites, do not so much arouse one's sympathies, as the wanton 
destruction of the red man's friend — the bison — awakens disgust. 
The Indian ivould not learn civilization, and refused and refuses 
to obey the order to earn bread by the sweat of the face. They 
had to go for civilization's sake ; but the buffalo committed no 
other crime than that of being the Indian's friend, and of afford- 
ing an easy target for the wanton murderer. Seventeen years ago 
I passed on the Union Pacific through a herd of many thousands 
at Platte Station. Their beef was then plenty and cheap all 
along the plains, and millions were yearly making their annual 
migration. For hundreds of miles along the Canadian Pacific are 
the countless trails they dug into a soil almost as hard as rock as 
they marched, in single file, from pasturage to pasturage and from 
water to water. Now, it is said, there are not over one or two 
hundred wild buffalo in the whole land. 

As we fly on westward the plain becomes browner and browner, 
but rarely entirely loses its green, and everywhere there are damp 
spots where it is of brightest emerald. The great plains on this 
road have but little of the painful monotony which oppresses one 
for such great distances on the other Pacific roads. The rolling 
prairies seem to rise and fall like old ocean's swell, always the same, 
but ever seeming to move and vary. One can watch the swell at 
sea day after day and not grow weary. These plains affected me 
much in the same way. I could traverse them again next week 
with pleasure. They are always fresh to the eye. This of itself 
will make this a favorite route for transcontinental tourists. In 
the whole ride, too, we were only three or four times troubled by 
dust, although we rode much of the time on the rear platform. 
The dusty places were only of a few miles in extent. 

At Medicine Hat, 600 miles west of Winnipeg, we crossed 
the south fork of the Saskatchewan River. Here, and for a long 




MB^ 



. 'f.'lU 




THE CHANCELLOR, OTTER TAIL RANGE, ROCKY MOUNTAINS. CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY 



r 



BANFF AND ITS HOT SPRINGS. 5 

distance, it is a navigable stream some 400 yards wide. Above 
this place, 50 to 100 miles, are fine coal-fields. The coal looked 
pure, and our dining-car cook assured us it was the best-cooking 
coal in America. Before night we should have seen the Rockies, 
but did not, because of the smoky atmosphere. Sixty miles from 
their foot lies Calgary, a town of 2,000 people, the centre of the 
great ranch district, where ranches with many thousands of horses 
abound. The grazing country is said to be very fine, and extends 
far south down into Montana. The plains here are very hand- 
some, and the bunch grass is prettily green. The land grows good 
wheat but better grass. 

At three o'clock on the morning of the 31st we reached the 
sanitarium Banff. We stopped over a day, and took two baths, 
one at the hot springs, temperature from 110° to 120°, said to 
have the specific virtues of the Arkansas springs, and sought 
for the same class of diseases. I do not think the bath produces 
the heavy sweats produced by those of Arkansas, but still I had 
to lie for half an hour before I became dry enough to dress. Sev- 
eral hundred feet below this spring are two others, within 100 
feet of each other. One is in a cave or grotto, about 25 feet in 
diameter, with a natural vaulted dome, say 30 feet high, as perfect 
as if cut by the hammer. It is now entered by an artificial tunnel 
100 feet long, and is lighted by a small natural opening at the 
apex. In the grotto is a natatorium, surrounded by pretty stalac- 
tites, with water five feet deep boiling up from the sandy bottom, 
with a temperature of 95°. Cold water pours from a large shell- 
shaped stalactite in sufficient quantity to make a cold shower. 
One can thus swim around in warm water, and then cool off his 
upper body, while from his waist down he is in a warm bath. A 
hundred feet from this is another large pool, 20 feet across, of 
about the same depth, and being in the open air the warm water 
can be seen bubbling up through the sands. Both this and the 
cave springs have streams flowing from them as large as a first- 
class fire-engine could pump. The cave spring discharges at its 
outlet without coloring the soil along the rivulet, while the other 
makes a white deposit. This is from a magnesiate of lime, impreg- 
nated with iron and sulphur. 

Banff is 2,400 feet above the sea, and is nestled down among 
mountains rising over 5,000 feet above the hotel, all of them this 
year with snow on their summits and far down the sides in the 
deep gorges. The sanitarium and hotel of the railroad is upon 
the bank of Bow River, a stream over 400 feet wide, of crystal 
clearness, slightly whitened by glacier water. The river under the 
hotel breaks through walls of rock two or more hundred feet high, 
forming a succession of cascades or rapids of 60 feet fall, in say, 
140 yards. The views of snow-clad mountains, the river, the cas- 
cades, and whirling pool below make the situation of the hotel one 
of the finest I have ever seen. Trout abound in the river of all 



6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

angling sizes. A lake-trout was brought in from Devil's Lake, 
12 miles off, while we w^x^ there, weighing 43 pounds. Banff is 
in the National Park of 260 square miles. With commendable 
wisdom, the government is building throughout the park fine 
roads laid out by skilled engineers. 

At three o'clock Monday morning we took the west-going train, 
and went to bed ; but the early light made us shorten our nap, 
for we were in wildly grand scenery. Now we were rushing 
through noble passes on the mountain sides, then under precipices 
lifting thousands of feet above us. Snow-clad mountains were 
ever standing like grand sentinels about our way. The engine 
puffs and snorts as it pulls us up the steep grade. The snow 
gorges crawl down nearer and nearer to us. The snowy peaks 
seem piled one above the other far above us. The stream we 
have climbed gets smaller and smaller, till at Mount Stephen we 
are at the summit, 5,300 feet above the sea, while above us lift the 
mighty rocky sides of the mountain, its peak almost over our 
head, 8,200 feet above the rail. The Bow River here begins in a 
little lake, while close by in a swamp is the fountain of the Kick- 
ing Horse, down whose canyons we must go for many a mile. 
Here starts the former, whose waters flow far away into Hudson's 
Bay. There, almost within a stone's throw, starts the other to 
carry Stephen's icy waters into the Pacific. Hour after hour we 
whirl along, in ever-rapid curving, down the canyon. Lofty 
mountains are on either side in vast precipices. We look up upon 
snow, now and then hardened into a glacier ; we look down from 
the rock-cut terrace, along which we bound, and see a stream 
of moving foam, now in cascade, then in rapids, never still enough 
to lose its snowy froth. Hour after hour we are in scenes of 
grandeur and beauty. I say beauty, for the white snow, the 
foaming waters, the green trees — these are beautiful, while the 
moun-tains,^with their frowning precipices, their rocky pinnacles 
piercing the blue sky, are grand. For 60 miles it is the same 
wonderful scenery. Our little creek has become a river, nar- 
row, but pouring towards the sea nearly as much water as flows 
down the Ohio at ordinary summer stage. 

At 9 o'clock our rushing, roaring river has emptied into the 
Columbia, which has come up from the United States with its 
milk-white glacier flood. It rolls in rapid current towards the 
north, washing the foot of Mount Brown 20 miles away. It 
will bend westward beyond the Selkirk range, at whose western 
base we will cross it again, after having steamed nearly a lOO 
miles through yet grander scenery. We cross the river ; we look 
back and see the towering Rockies. We look forward and no 
great way off lift the Selkirks. The ascent commences at once ; 
first up the Beaver, which near the Columbia passes through a 
gate one can scarcely believe to be of nature's fashioning. Two 
vertical slate precipices, only a few feet thick, lift themselves up 




n I n\\\' 

i i \ \ \ \ 



\ \\\ 

J I I L 



J 



SCENERY IN THE S ELK IRKS. 7 

like the framework of a portcullis, through which the little river 
rushes. A door 20 feet wide, set against the gateway, would stop 
the whole stream. Up this river, and then up Bear Creek we climb. 
The river is at first a few feet beneath us. Up we go. The river 
is a 100, then 400, then 1,000 feet below. Still up, till far be- 
low us — 2,000 feet — now through timber, and then over the tops 
of lofty firs, we see the stream winding through marshy grass, 
which one of us insists is a wheat-field. We seem to hang on the 
mountain's side. Now the road runs through tunnels ; then it is 
timbered out over precipices. 

We are soon in the heart of the mountains ; far up their sides, 
till the snow and rocks are met, are magnificent forests of pine and 
fir, with stems as straight as arrows. I said we were in the moun- 
tains' heart. I was too quick. We soon will be, for we break 
through a pass between two peaks clad in eternal snow. The 
snow is nearly down to our level, which is here 4,300 feet above 
the sea. See yonder white precipice ; it is the foot of a mighty 
glacier, hundreds of feet thick, and pushed down in hardened 
stream from the upper peak yet far above and beyond its brow. 
The scenery now is grand beyond the power of language to paint. 
One glacier frowns upon another. To our right we pass the sum- 
mit, and two miles on we reach the Glacier House, a Swiss chalet, 
in front of which are pretty fountains throwing up icy jets ; and 
apparently a few hundred yards away to our left, is a monster 
glacier, with its foot not much above the level of the road. With 
a glass we see mighty fissures cracking its surface. It bends over 
the mountain like a falling curtain. We are told it is a mile and a 
half wide, nine miles long, and 500 feet deep. Mount Sir Donald 
is watching its slow descent. Far above the snow, his peak, shaped 
like a diamond drill, pierces the blue sky 6,000 feet above us. We 
have to bend our heads back to look at his pinnacle. The de- 
scent is now down a silvery thread, called the lUecillewaet River. 
It tumbles in cascades, and as it tumbles it grows. We get down 
hill by making iron loops. One could pitch a marble from the 
window upon the track below, which we will reach after bending 
as on the link of a chain. After a while the little silver thread has 
become a foaming stream, then a rushing river, so strong that it 
cuts its way between two perpendicular cliffs in a canyon appa- 
rently not over 25 feet wide, but several hundred feet deep. 
The river springs through this like a madman in a leap then 
foams along for miles below. At last, after a run of seventy odd 
miles through the Selkirks, we emerge from them and cross the 
Columbia, a stream greatly grown since we saw it last 100 miles 
back. 

After a while we enter another system of mountains — the Gold 
range. The scenery in these would be glorious, but we are 
satiated with grandeur, and are more delighted by the beautiful 
lakes, along whose margins we run, than by the heights above us. 



S A JiACE WITH THE SUN. 

After leaving this range, we are upon waters which empty into 
the Frazer River. Before night we pass several beautiful lakes- 
One of them, the Shuswap, is of very considerable extent ; we 
run along its shores for over 50 miles. Its width varies from one 
to four or five miles. Peaks 2,000 to 3,000 feet high lift them- 
selves above its waters, now by steep ascent, then by sloping 
benches. Its waters are said to be full of fish ; we frequently saw 
them rising. 

The next morning we were upon the Frazer. Here we had a 
different character of scenery from any before seen. The road 
runs along the bank of the river, perhaps 100 feet above 
the water, nearly all the time upon ledges cut into the rock or 
'upon the steeply descending sides of the mountains. We must 
have gone through 30 tunnels, in length from a few hundred 
feet to several hundred yards, all cut through solid granite. The 
river runs through rocky canyons at the foot of mountains lifting 
2,500 to 4,000 feet. Many of them were of bare rock, others beau- 
tifully treed. Behind these immediately along the river are yet 
higher peaks, more or less flecked with snow. Laughing brooks 
and foaming streams are frequently crossed, coming down gorges 
in bounding cascades. The Frazer is a mighty river of white 
water rising 500 miles away among ranges covered with eternal 
snows. It is joined where we struck it by the Thompson, itself a 
noble stream. It flows in turbulent current, now several hundred 
yards wide, then cutting its way through rocky doors not over 
100 feet from jamb to jamb. Often for miles it rushes in fall almost 
as fast as a cataract. Below each fall it whirls in angry pools ; on 
nearly all the ledges jutting over these pools are frames of light 
wood, on which the Indians' winter supply of salmon hangs like 
red tobacco in a southern field. Indians are seen perched on 
projecting ledges, scooping with a net, shaped like a tennis bat,, 
for finny beauties. Their fishing huts are on nearly every green 
spot. Here and there is seen a Chinese washing a little gold from 
the sands. High on the opposite side of the river runs the road 
built 28 years ago by the government to the Carabo mines, 400 
miles away. It often runs at dizzy heights and is so narrow that 
the stage-coach passengers must have been in constant alarm — 
that is, if they were other than gold-seekers. For these fellows 
would have ridden the devil barebacked, and never felt a tremor, 
if the dust was at the journey's end. For 60 odd miles we ran 
in and out of rock-hewn tunnels, over trestles, along ledges cut 
from the solid rock, and over terraces built from many feet below. 
The rushing river was ever some 50 to 200 feet below us, while 
high over our heads and frowning from the opposite side of the 
canyon the steep mountains lifted themselves to a height varying 
from 2,500 to perhaps 4,000 feet. They were often rocky but- 
tresses, their steep slopes covered with pines and firs. This canyon 
is alone worth the trip, and, while it lacks the awful grandeur 



THE FRAZER RIVER. 9, 

of the glaciered peaks of the Rockies and Selkirks, yet, being 
always so close to us, is more terrible and startling. 

After leaving it we ran through forests of giant cedars — cedars 
two to five feet in diameter. But, sad to say, these noble trees a 
good part of the time stood like blackened spectres, and often 
were but lofty stumps five or six to 30 feet high. What wild 
havoc the fire-fiend has been for years, and yet is, making in the 
vast forests of the Pacific slope ! The air in the Selkirks was blue 
with smoke, and so it was from their base to the end of the road. 
The air even here on the south side of Vancouver Island is still 
hazy. From our windows we ought to be able to see Mount 
Baker's snowy crest, far to the southeast, and the Olympian 
mountains, only some 30 or 40 miles to the southwest. In- 
stead of that, high hills only ten miles away are dimly seen as 
bluish masses above the horizon. Millions of trees, such as would 
be the admiration of people east of the Mississippi, are now burn- 
ing ; millions upon millions of acres have been within the last five 
years stripped of valuable forests, which east of the Rockies would 
be worth many times more than all the gold produced within these 
years on the whole Pacific coast, and yet many of the fires which 
have destroyed such vast wealth have been started by mining 
prospectors. They burn certain wealth not their own above the 
ground, in the hope of finding uncertain signs of riches which may 
become their own, but is now hidden beneath the surface. 

And now from this beautiful land, where winter never freezes 
and summer never parches ; where, though eight degrees north of 
Chicago, the honeysuckle embowers the verandas and the rose- 
bush is a small tree in the garden ; where the cherries are nearly 
as large as plums, and the red raspberry is a pulpy monster; 
where the young pine makes a good fishing-pole, and the fir is 
taller than the mast of the largest ship ; where cedars are mon- 
sters, and the balm of Gilead is like a big cotton-wood ; — from this 
anomalous clime, good-morning. 



CHAPTER 11. 

TIMBER— PRODUCTIONS AND PECULIARITIES OF OREGON AND 

WASHINGTON— FOREST-FIRES AND SMOKE— SCENERY 

OF THE COLUMBIA. 

Green River, Hot Springs, W. T., August 14, 1887. 

PUGET Sound is one of the world's marvels. It lies like a mighty 
antlered formation. Its inlets and arms, running 20 to 60 miles 
into the land, are never more than four or five miles broad, 
and are often not over a half mile, with a depth varying from 50 
feet to hundreds of fathoms. The deep water comes up close to 
the shore, and oftentimes sheer up, so that the largest man-of- 
war could tie to a forest tree whose roots are watered by the 
ocean's brine. By the way, why is it that in the East the salt 
water of the sea prevents trees from growing anywhere near the 
shore, while out here the lower limbs of great trees are touched 
at high tide? The sound has but few harbors, because anchorage 
is rarely to be had. The longest cable will not permit an anchor 
to reach bottom, and the tides will not let a ship tie to the shore. 
At Tacoma the difference between low and high tide is over 
20 feet. At the mouth of the Strait of Fuca it is less than 
five feet ; but the tidal waves press into the narrow sound and 
lift themselves up to nearly 30 feet in some of the inlets. The 
meeting of the tides creates heavy, angry breakers. 

Seattle and Tacoma are the great rival towns of the sound. 
The discrimination against the former by the Northern Pacific 
Railroad has made the dislike of Tacoma by the average Seattlean 
something absolutely interesting. She is trying to get even, how- 
ever, and will soon have a road built along the east shore of the 
sound, to tap the Canadian Pacific near Vancouver, and will ulti- 
mately cross the mountains to meet the Manitoba road, which is 
expected to enter Helena this year, and will then stretch out for 
the sound. 

The trade of this region with the East will before long become 
great, and the northwest of our land will offer greater commercial 
attractions than does the orange-growing southwestern California. 
There " the orange and citron is fairest fruit." But here the 
mighty forests, which cover the lowlands as densely as the jungles 
of the tropics, and climb the mountains until the snow-line is met, 
can furnish the world with timber for centuries. But, unfortu- 
nately, the people, while proud of their grand trees, seem to think 




HERMIT MOUNTAIN, ROGERS' PASS. CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. 



THE TIMBER SUPPLY OF PUGET SOUND. ii 

them inexhaustible, and are each year burning in sheer wantonness 
a half-century's supply. It is calculated that over a hundred 
square miles of forest will be burnt this season. 

The lumbermen, who ought to regard them as their great 
wealth-producers, do not seem at all distressed at this terrible 
destruction, for they say that fires do not destroy the timber, but 
simply kill the trees. And that, after being killed, they remain 
sound for several years' consumption, while the loggers get the 
logs out much easier after the undergrowth has been burnt. 
This is a selfish feeling, especially as it is known that if a forest 
be thoroughly burnt young pines and cedars do not spring up in 
the future. It is the exception on this coast when young forests 
follow a fire. The summers here are so dry that the delicate 
seeds of the evergreen do not germinate as they would if rains 
were even moderately frequent. The seeds cannot grow as they 
would if protected by dense shades. The soil is burnt up. The 
trees are so enormously large and their roots extend so close to 
the surface, that after a fire there is nothing left but ashes from 
four to six inches deep. No one who has not gone, through the 
forests of this coast can have any idea of the enormous amount of 
timber growing upon a given surface. An old army officer told 
us he had to make calculations as to the number of feet stand- 
ing upon some land, and fixed it at 200,000 feet of sawed 
lumber per acre, and that, too, where the trees were not large. 
We have now had a good opportunity for seeing some of the 
heaviest forests. We have fished along three streams, and have 
found out by experience the great labor necessary to get through 
the wood along water courses. The close proximity of one tree 
to another, and their vast height, is simply marvellous. The 
roots of one mingle with the roots of its neighbor. The trunks 
stand four to six feet in diameter, and nearly 300 feet in height, 
and could furnish saw-logs 180 to 230 feet long. I yesterday ran 
my fishing-line around a cedar six feet from the ground, and found 
it to be over 31 feet in circumference, or over ten feet in 
diameter. There was another, not ten feet away, which was over 
six feet in diameter. On the opposite side of the creek, on the steep 
slope of a foothill, were some 20 acres of pines of vast height, all 
three to five feet in diameter, and so close together that they 
seemed almost a solid mass. 

To reach the stream where we intended to commence fishing, 
we had to cross about a quarter of a mile of bottom land, over 
which a heavy wind had passed last year. The enormous trees 
were thrown about in vast confusion. I walked along a huge log 
to its upper end, and the weedy undergrowth appeared so solid 
at the side that I supposed it was only a few inches deep. I 
stepped off the log, which, as I thought, was there a foot thick, and 
on the ground, when, lo ! I sank up to my shoulders in dense 
growth. When fishing yesterday, our guide at a certain point 



12 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

near a railroad bridge put the boys in the stream and told them to 
fish down it to the hotel. He sent me a half mile above the 
bridge, he going a like distance above me. I reached the bridge 
when the sun was an hour high, and struck down the track for 
the hotel, expecting to find Willie and John already in, for they 
are fishermen who think a trout on a dish much more enjoy- 
able than a trout in a stream. When I got home they were not 
there. I supposed our guide would bring them in. Presently he 
arrived without them. Dusk and then dark came on. I was 
alarmed. Their whole fishing-ground from bridge to hotel, which 
is on the bank of the river, was not in extent a mile. The guide 
and I went up the railroad, and hallooed as loudly as possible, but 
could get no answer, and yet the river was nowhere a quarter of 
a mile from the track. To reach it through the woods without a 
torch was nearly impossible, and to go down stream dangerous at 
night. We returned and found the whole population in wild com- 
motion. The women spoke of bears. Some men feared that, al- 
though the deepest pools were not over head deep, yet they might 
have been sucked by the rapid current under adrift. Others said 
darkness had caught them, and they had built a fire to camp for 
the night. 

We got up an expedition with a single obtainable lantern, bor- 
rowed at the little railroad station. We walked up the track 
until opposite the fishing-ground. We fired pistols. No answer. 
We then fired a rifle. Its clear note cut the forest air, and was 
echoed back from the foot-hills, a half-mile off. But sweeter still 
than the echo came a view halloo from Willie, and then the shrill 
whistle of Johnny. The woods between them and us had been 
burnt this season. We struck an Indian file, two before the lan- 
tern and two behind. A couple of hundred yards in we got be- 
wildered. We retraced our steps over logs as high as one's head, 
down into holes of ashes nearly up to the knee, and again reached 
the road and fired our guns. We heard an answer. I then sent 
the party in, while I mounted a stump to watch the lantern and 
to guide them by my pistol-shots. In about a quarter of an hour 
a volley of shots told us the lost were found. In another quarter 
of an hour we saw the light coming back. John and Willie had a 
tale to tell. They had not had a clear knowledge of the length 
of their fishing route. They had nearly reached the hotel with- 
out their knowledge. It began to grow dark, and they thought 
it best to retrace their steps to the bridge. Darkness came on. 
They calmly built a fire to wait till morning, or till they should 
be found. Both were black from climbing burnt logs, and both 
were forlorn in appearance, but happy in the possession of a new 
experience. Their camp-fire was close to the bank of the rushing 
stream, and its noise too great for them to hear shouts, or even a 
pistol-shot at first. Had they attempted to reach the road in the 
dark they would have been half stripped and badly mangled. 



PECULIARITIES OF OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 13 

Even with a light it took a quarter of an hour to make a fifth of 
a mile. 

The lumber of this region is reaching an enormous product. 
One mill at Tacoma cuts 200,000 feet a day. There are a few 
others as large, and everywhere heavy cutting establishments. 
All lumber is shipped as square timber, to be cut up near the 
market. A few pieces have been shipped to South America 
120 feet in length. From 40 to 80 feet is not at all uncommon. 
We saw lumber going East stretching over the entire length of 
two long cars. Logs are barked in the woods, then one end is 
cut slightly sloping, so as to run easily over roots and skid roads. 

Here wages in the woods are high, good ox teamsters com- 
manding over $100 per month. It is not every man who 
can get out of Buck and Brindle their entire muscular abil- 
ity. A skilled teamster, with his thumb gouging a bull's 
flank, can make the honest fellow almost crack his yoke. One 
thing strikes the stranger as singular — that is, the enormous 
height of the stumps. The pitch or turpentine of the trees lies 
in the trunk six to ten feet above the ground. The tree is felled 
above this line. This is not entirely waste, for the saw will hardly 
cut the timber in the stump, and when cut it is unsalable. By 
the way, we heard of one tract of 160 acres, from which it is claimed 
nearly 700,000 feet of timber — board measure — was cut from each 
acre, and of a single tree which cut 45,000 feet. We did not see 
this, but have reason to believe the statement true. 

In many respects Oregon and Washington present anomalies. 
Much Indian corn is grown in different parts of Oregon, not for 
maturity, but to be consumed green. The ground is ploughed, 
the corn planted, and in the majority of fields is not cultivated at 
all, but left to work out its growth. If the season be good the 
farmer makes money selling roasting ears ; if bad, he gets some 
fodder. One good rain makes a crop on the whole coast, it mat- 
ters not what the thing be. The rapidity of growth is almost as 
marvellous as is the size attained. 

We boarded the train at Dallas, on the Columbia, in upper 
Oregon, in a range of more or less wooded hills. In five hours we 
looked out of the window, and found ourselves in a land where 
not a tree could be seen, — not even a bush other than sage and 
some of its congeners, and here and there a prickly pear. The 
air was almost crisp in its dryness. The hills in the early morning 
looked as if covered with a soft velvety growth ; the glass showed 
this to arise from the closely grown sage-brush. Between the 
bushes was a low bunch-grass, growing out of an arid ash-colored 
soil. Near the rivers the sands are absolutely movable, and are 
carried in clouds by a stiff wind. Yet in this sandy desert toler- 
ably fair crops grow without irrigation. We saw a huge rick of 
rye, unthreshed, put up for fodder, and were told it averaged two 
and a half tons to the acre. About the junction of the Snake and 



14 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Columbia rivers a more uninviting country can hardly be 
imagined, and yet in a little plantation of poplars set out from the 
slip, in the spring of 1886, the young trees were four to eight feet 
in height, and of full, bushy tops. I measured one of the shoots 
of this season ; it was nearly five feet in length. We counted 
twenty-eight shoots on one little tree. We dug into the dry sand, 
and found moisture at seven inches. We ate watermelon from a 
patch said not to have been watered this season. The melon was 
quite large and well flavored, but the meat rather pithj', as is the 
meat of all melons and apples raised on this coast, the result 
probably of abnormally rapid growth. 

Another remarkable feature of this country is the meagreness 
of the wheat and rye straw when compared to the amount of 
grain produced. We saw quite a large field of wheat which had 
been harvested. From the light stubble we did not think over 
ten bushels could have been gathered, but was assured the 
whole field of over 30 acres had averaged 24. This is true, too, 
of the great Walla Walla wheat country, where 40 bushels 
are often threshed from straw which an Eastern man would 
think could not yield one fourth of the amount. This fact 
causes many superficial observers passing through the country 
greatly to underrate the productiveness of the soil. A Michigan- 
der whom we met swore he would not give one good farm in his 
State for all Oregon and Washington Territory for agricultural 
purposes. He had only seen the standing crops, and therefrom 
made his estimate of values. All fruit matures rapidly, and is 
often rather tasteless. The green corn is insipid and the apples 
lack flavor. The pears are quite good, and the plums and berries 
delicious. I regret to say there appears to be a general lack of 
energy among the people, and especially among the farmers. The 
ground produces without much work. Stock live out-doors all 
winter and grow fat on the grass, which nature turns into hay 
without being cut. The farmers, therefore, grow careless, and 
have a general look of lacking thrift. 

We went to Oregon and Washington more to see the scenery 
than to look at the people, or to examine into the sources of 
wealth, but found every thing shrouded in smoke. At Portland 
one could scarcely see across the Willamette River, and the dust 
was nearly half-ankle deep. It required a compass to find in what 
direction Mount Hood was standing. We left Willamette in a 
smoke which actually made our eyes smart, and from the park in 
Portland the spires of the churches were merely spectral outlines. 
Portland is a fine and handsome city. Its business houses are 
well built, and its residences comfortable-looking and embowered 
in vines and shrubbery. But its glory seems to be gone. If the 
rich men of the place do not soon bestir themselves, little Tacoma 
and thrifty, pushing Seattle will soon catch and pass it. The 
Chinese look prosperous and busy. The balance of the people 



SCENERY OF THE CO EU MB I A RIVER. 15: 

seem to be living on past recollections, and that, too, though,^ 
according to population, there are few places in America where 
there is so much average wealth. The people want some life beat 
into them. I ask their pardon if I have reached a too rapid 
opinion. I wonder if the smoke has not something to do with it. 
The people are probably cured into abnormal steadiness. We 
left the city Avell pleased with the pleasant people, but rubbing 
our eyes as if we had been in a smoke-house. By the way, we 
determined that Eastern packers should bring their pork here to 
be cured. A house of wire gauze to keep the flies out would take 
in smoke enough to cure hams and jerked beef, without any other 
than that furnished by the forest fires. 

We found the lower Columbia River so involved in sooty haze 
that, when in the middle channel, we could barely see the two 
shores. But as we approached the cascades the atmosphere grew 
clearer, and after passing them we were met by a wind from up 
the stream, and were soon in full enjoyment of the beauty of this 
incomparable river. The high mountains towered up, and the 
rocks wore that indescribable purple-brown seen nowhere else. 
Landscape after landscape was presented to our view, holding- 
us in silent rapture. Many of them would be grand if they were 
not so beautiful. One feels as he does when looking on a noble 
woman with a madonna face. The majesty of her form is lost in 
the angelic visage. The tints of the rocks and precipices are to 
the other rocks what an Italian sky is to other blue skies. There 
was just enough smoke to tone down the distant heights without 
destroying a single outline. It supplied the softening effect 
which the mists furnish in the Tyrol. Even Mount Hood 
deigned to show us his sentinel peak, with his eternal snows and 
his glaciered slopes ; he seemed a monarch, disclaiming all com- 
panionship. So spellbound were the passengers of our steamer 
that they simply turned once to glance at Mount Adam's grand 
cone, far to the north. We were satisfied ; we had seen what we 
came to see, — the Columbia and Mount Hood. 



CHAPTER III. 

MORE ABOUT WASHINGTON— VICTORIA AND 
VANCOUVER ISLAND. 

Victoria, B. C, August 19, 1887. 

Two weeks ago we first reached this pretty old town. We 
were anxious to go to Alaska, but found the steamer would not 
leave before the 8th, to return to-day. But our ship, the Batavia, 
was scheduled to leave to-day for Japan. We might make Alaska 
and return in time, but if fog should interfere for one day we 
would get back too late. We were advised not to take the 
chance. We therefore went to Washington Territory and 
Oregon ; hurried through them more rapidly than we could have 
wished ; got back here, and found that for some reason the Bata- 
via would not be here, but that the Parthia would take her place 
a week later. A whole week would, therefore, be on our hands, 
and we were out of those regions where we could make profitable 
excursions. 

This morning when we went down to breakfast there sat some 
friends who had gone over the Canadian Pacific with us. They 
had been to Alaska, and did not have a single rainy or foggy 
day. The trip before, the steamer had both rain and fog. It 
ought to have been our good-fortune to have been aboard, and to 
have enjoyed what we so much desired, — this fine excursion 
towards Behring Strait. But, sad to admit, my star had set. 

By the way, it will be little singular if we should sail across the 
mighty Pacific on the Parthia. Fourteen years ago last May I 
stood at the Cunard docks, in New York, and watched this ship 
sail out with those who were dearest of all on earth to me, — my 
wife and children. They had taken a position where I could see 
them as long as possible. We waved our handkerchiefs until 
they could no longer be seen. But still I watched until the good 
ship was lost in the Narrows. I clutched a pile, which stood 
above the pier, and in nervous distress tried to shake it. There 
disappeared nearly all that made life dear to me. Between them 
and eternity was a single plate. Would I ever see them again ? 
Would they ever return to their native land ? Who could 
answer ? As I stood straining my red eyes — I had not shed a 
tear while with my dear ones, but when they were gone I broke 
down and wept, not as a woman, but as a strong man can weep, tears 
which seem to be wrung from the very soul — a rough man passed 

16 



VANCOUVER ISLAND. 17 

tne. He saw my distress. Touching his hat, he said, in gentle 
tones which I can never cease to thank him for : " You have 
friends on the Parthia, have n't you ? " "Yes, my wife and all 
my children." " Don't be aggrieved, sir ; they will reach t'other 
side. She is a stanch ship." And the good stevedore's eyes were 
moist with real sympathy. The ship zvas stanch ; she bore 
my loved ones to "t'other side." But one of them, and the 
dearest, is still on the other side. She sleeps in her far-off " God's 
acre." Her spirit took its last flight in 1876 among strangers; 
warm-hearted Germans shed tears on her grave, and the eternal 
hills of Thuringia look down upon her German resting-place. In 
1874, I went over myself on the Parthia and spent the summer 
with my family, and rekindled the friendship which many years 
before, as a young man, I had formed for the German people. 
Now I am on my way to Germany, to bring back my wife's 
remains, to lay them by the side of her little ones who sleep in 
Chicago's Graceland. I go with the sun and the Parthia steps in 
to take the place of the ship which was to have carried me nearly 
five thousand miles on my journey. I hail her as an omen of 
good yet to come. She is expected to-morrow, and we hope to 
sail on her on the 25th. We will lose a week from the time I hope 
to spend in the land of the Mikado. This week cannot be made 
up, for climatic reasons may force us onward toward India before 
fully doing Japan. 

In a former letter from here I said nothing of this pretty 
place. Unlike others we have seen on the coast, it seems built to 
stay. The bulk of the houses in the main town are of brick and 
have a solid outlook. The streets are broad and well laid out and 
paved, the road-beds being a heavy macadam of trap-rock, steam- 
rolled. 

The worthy mayor, Mr. Fell, drove us around yesterday, point- 
ing out the points of interest. This island, Vancouver, is about 300 
miles long by 75 to lOO miles broad in the wider parts. It is moun- 
tainous, and not adapted to a high cultivation, but has a soil which 
will, when the great empire of the Pacific shall be in its glory, 
furnish food for a large population. It is throughout well wooded, 
not with the vast-sized timber of the main-land, but with trees 
that would be considered fine in Michigan. It has extensive 
coal-fields, and yesterday I saw the man who from poverty actually 
stumbled into a huge fortune. His foot was caught in the root 
of a fallen tree, causing him to fall ; looking down he saw a piece 
of coal, and thus discovered the fields of Nanaimo. The lucky 
man, now a millionaire, with the aid of California capital has 
built a railroad from this place, some 70 odd miles long, and the 
town of Nanaimo is a flourishing place of over 3,000 people. The 
road is pushing still on and, I think, has reached Comox, 60 miles 
farther north. How few people in the eastern States or in Eng- 
land have any conception of this Pacific country of the northwest! 



1 8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

The cunning Hudson Bay Company gave out to the world the 
impression that the country from Lake Superior to the mouth of 
the Columbia and thence to the far-off north was the home of the 
fur-bearing animals, and that only the trappers could gain a living 
in it. This impression has taken such a deep hold, that those that 
visit it are supposed to be visionary dreamers, or worse, when they 
tell the world that this vast country is admirably fitted for the 
home of man. A soil which produces of wheat from 30 to 45 
bushels per acre; oats from 50 to 70 and potatoes from 125 to 
200 bushels ; this, too, on the better lands even of this island. On 
the main-land oats have threshed out, just within the United States 
line, over 100 bushels, and I heard of potatoes running to 700. 

Last week we stopped at the celebrated hop fields of Payallup, 
in Washington Territory, and saw a field which had given 4,000 
pounds per acre, and 1,600 pounds is the average yield of some 
6,000 and more acres. The rich low grounds on White River, The 
Pyallup, and several other streams average over 2,000 pounds per 
acre. We looked at the poles upon which were vast crowns of white 
hops, as yet not half grown, but as large as ripe ones grown in the 
east, and I could not help feeling there was a vast amount of 
personal liberty flowering about us, and that a regular and large 
hop-growth in Washington Territory would help to drive out 
adulterated beer and alcoholic poison and prove the solution of 
the temperance question. Pure and cheap beer will drive " rot- 
gut " out of the world. The philanthropist will then cease to be 
a prohibitionist, and the question will be taken out of politics. 
The hop-growth of the Territory is simply in its infancy. We talked 
with a man — John Meeker — who, a-foot, carried the first 20 
roots into the hop region on his shoulders, when railroads were 
scarcely dreamed of and the stage-coach only tried to go to the 
gold diggings. Meeker's father carried in a single bag the first 
crop of hops to a local market ; that was done only 20 odd 
years ago. Now the yield for this year will be about 50,000 
bales, each bale weighing 180 pounds or thereabout. 

Next month the harvest begins, and then from the far north, 
nearly as far as Alaska, and from over the mountains will come 
Indians by the thousands to do the gathering and to earn from $2 
to $3 a day. The squaws are the best pickers. At Seattle and 
Tacoma their camps are already to be seen, and Siwash (Indian) 
canoes dot the whole of Puget Sound, bearing their loads of six 
to a dozen Indians, with prows turned toward the hop lands. We 
certainly saw on the water or drawn upon the shore several 
hundreds of the huge dug-outs, some of them nearly as big as the 
war-galley of Homer's heroes. It is said to be worth a trip across 
the country to see the great pic-nic of the pickers in the months of 
September and October. The red pickers number several thou- 
sands. They pitch their " shaks," or tents, in the streets, along 
the banks of the streams, and up against the railroad tracks, and 
gather by day and laugh and gamble by night. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SOIL AND CLIMATE OF NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC SLOPE— VICTORIA 
AND ESQUIMAULT— GREEN RIVER— HOT SPRINGS AND TROUT. 

Victoria, B. C, August 21, 1887. 

There is the home of a great future population in the north- 
west ; I think I can see into the future, guided by what history 
tells of the dense populations of the far past, that there will some 
day be a great people in the cool northwest — greater than in hot 
and dry California or in the more inhospitable regions just east of 
the Rockies. Here in the valleys and on the bulk of the plains is 
an inexhaustible soil, which yields when irrigated, and in many 
parts without irrigation, returns unknown in any other section of 
the civilized world. This soil is practically inexhaustible ; the 
loam of the valleys is often over 100 feet deep ; the earth of the 
plains seems to be a sort of volcanic ash, rich in all the ingredients 
which make the kernels of wheat and other cereals. On the 
railroad embankments one frequently sees stools of oats as rich 
and green 'as is grown on an old stable yard. At Green River hot 
springs, growing on the road-bed, which resembled ashy clay, 
we counted 226 berry-pods of oats on a stool from a single seed, 
and 18 stalks from a timothy stool. The bank was eight 
feet above the level of the land, and the soil composing the road- 
bed was taken from a deep cut. There are millions of acres easily 
to be irrigated. The mountains will furnish wood and timber for all 
times, and in their bowels are all kinds of minerals. In the vast 
depths of the sounds, bays, and inlets are the resorts of the count- 
less finny tribes of earth's greatest ocean. Here the fish come in 
from the sea in endless profusion, and all of them thoroughly 
fitted for food for man. 

Harbors abound, capable of holding the fleets of the world. 
And all along the coast from Fuca Strait up to Alaska are fiords 
of vast depth running parallel to the ocean and constantly open- 
ing into it by safe inlets, along which cheap steamers can go from 
point to point without the danger of ever encountering a storm 
which an Ohio craft may not meet. The Indian of Alaska comes 
to Tacoma in his dug-out canoe with his whole family, and with 
as little risk as one could run on a small river. The largest ship 
can steam in these inlets and salt rivers, without ever hitting upon 
an unseen danger. There are no shoals and no hidden rocks ; and 

19 



20 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a vessel can lay its broadside sheer up against the shore any- 
where with no other danger than that of abrasion when lifted or 
lowered by the tides. 

The scenery of the whole northwest is of so grand a character 
that every thing east of the Rockies is comparatively tame. I do 
not mean to detract from the beauties of our own section. For 
there is not a hill anywhere which does not furnish, to my eye, a 
line of beauty. There is not a flowery prairie or a waving field of 
grain which does not give delight. There is not a gurgling rivulet 
which does not sing in tones far sweeter than those of the most 
gifted diva. But here there is more of it all, and on so stupen- 
dous a scale, that ours are to them what a parlor melody is to a 
grand chorus, or the eolia singing among the pine needles is to the 
grand artillery of the storm. 

I look out of the window every few moments from my 
writing table, and the low mountains of this island present to the 
eyes as fine outlines and as green and beautiful foothills as one 
can find anywhere in the AUeghanies ; and yet these mountains 
are but pigmies to those one could see to the south or west of this 
hotel, if the smoke would but blow away. To see the grandeur 
of this region one should come before July or after September. 
Smoke is apt to be the rule in July, August, and September. 
Even in these months the haze rather softens the near landscape 
but it hides the mighty background. 

This place ought to and ultimately will be to this coast what 
Newport is to the east. The rocks along the seashore resemble 
those at the plutocrat's heaven in Rhode Island, only they are 
more numerous, and the bays and inlets would be the delight of 
the lover of the oar. Some of the latter are little salt rivers along 
which the rising or falling tide sends a current of two or three 
miles an hour ; their shores are covered with beautiful trees, green 
firs, spruces, and elders, and the red-barked arbutis bending its 
gnarly branches among the green foliage, as smooth as if rubbed 
down with sand paper and as red as if painted by the brush. The 
wild roses grow as large as lilac bushes and often cover whole 
acres. The royal navy yard of Esquimault looks as if its site had 
been selected as much to please the eye as for its wonderful road- 
stead. This roadstead resembles a beautiful lake of a couple of 
thousand acres, almost circular, surrounded by wooded hills and 
rounded trapite rocks, with an inlet of only a few hundred feet, 
and opening from it a few small inferior arms. It is deep enough 
to receive the largest iron-clad. 

We were most kindly shown all of the store-rooms, the torpedo 
rooms — -in fact every thing which can be possibly exhibited to a 
stranger. To Mr. Fell we were indebted for this courtesy. The 
dry-dock is a huge one, in which the iron-clad Caroline was lying 
to be cleaned. She filled but a small portion of the huge dock. It 
is built of solid masonry and shows that the home government 



A REMARKABLE CLIMATE. 21 

does not intend, without a struggle, to abandon British America. 
The Cormorant has just come out of dock. And the sullen, 
dangerous-looking iron-clad Triumph, from which floats the 
admiral's pennant, lies close by. We rowed out to see this great 
ship. She is now a fifth-rate, but a few years ago was considered 
an invulnerable monster. She has in her waist a sort of fort in 
which are 14 huge guns, which could soon destroy any of our 
fortifications, and her deck has long, small, many bullet-throwing 
guns to rake an enemy's deck, some of them carrying a rifle-ball 
3,000 yards. We were politely received and entertained in the 
ward-room by the captain and several lieutenants. This is the 
head-quarters of the Pacific squadron, and the admiral, who 
cruises from Alaska to Cape Horn, appreciates the variety of 
climates his cruising ground affords him. He winters about the 
equator and enjoys this glorious climate in the summer. Heads 
of elk, mountain sheep, goats and deer surround his cabin, 
and rugs of many kinds of skins, the trophies of his own hunting 
excursions, prove him to be a hunter of the mountains as well as 
of the seas, and that he is as ready to bring down the denizen of 
the woods as his calling makes him to destroy man. 

The dock here has cost over a million, and the ships and stores 
of all kinds in this navy yard cost many millions. Will this ever 
be? Is man by his nature so pugnacious that these preparations 
for killing must ever exist ? Here in the torpedo house was a 
torpedo boat, and another in the harbor, ready to destroy the 
unwary. Each fish-looking torpedo, of which there are many, cost 
about $2,500. This is but one of the many establishments be- 
longing to England, and every nation has its own. And all for 
the purpose of destroying him who we are told was made in God's 
image ! What is, is right. Man was made by his Maker and not 
by the devil. There is but one God, and the only devil lives in 
the hearts of his creatures. He intended it, and it is right. If 
man did not kill his fellow-men he would so increase and multiply 
that he would after a while do as the fishes of the sea — eat each 
other. So he is permitted to kill in the name of liberty and of 
religion to keep him from killing for meat. 

The climate of this great region is to an eastern man even more 
remarkable than its productions. The thermometer rarely falls 
much below the freezing-point at Victoria, or anywhere west of 
the Cascade range, and while the days are warm in summer they 
are never hot, and so far at night we have required at least two 
blankets throughout this month. Every cottage is covered with 
honeysuckle or some climbing plant, which in the Chicago parks 
have to be laid and covered in winter. And the ivy seems as 
flourishing as at Washington City. There it is sometimes killed 
by frost. Here it never is. A gentleman told me that at Seattle 
he had gathered out-door roses during every month of the year. 
The strawberry blooms early in April and the wild fruit is nearly 



22 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

as large as our ordinary cultivated ones. Along the coast and up 
to the heights of the Cascades in Washington Territory and the 
Selkirks in British Columbia the air is full of humidity, except 
during the summer months. East of the Cascades it is generally 
very dry. When we were on the Columbia at the mouth of Snake 
River, I was amazed to find the thermometer, about 3 o'clock, over 
100° in the shade. The air was so dry and free from all sul- 
triness, that I did not feel the heat as being oppressive. 

On the treeless plains, and among the wheat fields of Walla 
Walla, it rarely ever rains in summer, is never damp, yet, strange 
to tell, the people suffer greatly from rheumatism. Judge Lang- 
ford, whom we met at the Green River hot springs, declared he 
considered his locality (Walla Walla) to be the natural home of 
the dread disease. The summer dryness explains, probably, why 
we saw no mosquitoes in Oregon or Washington Territory, while 
all the way from the eastern entrance to the Rockies, on the 
Canadian Pacific, clear down to the coast, the pests kept us fight- 
ing every evening, when the train would stop for a few moments. 
We are now thinking of going back upon the road to spend the 
time until the 25th. A gentleman who has just returned from 
Harrison hot springs, about ,60 miles west of Vancouver, says 
the mosquito has been terrible. Even at Glacier House, in the 
Selkirks, nearly 5,000 feet above the sea and right under the 
huge glacier, some of our passengers were deterred from stopping 
overnight, because they were so bad, and there were, as yet, 
no bars in the house. And yet we fished in Washington Terri- 
tory along several streams, some of them but a little above the 
sea level, and at hot springs, 1,400 feet up, and did not once see 
enough mosquitoes to annoy us. 

It will be, or ought to be, grateful information to our good 
ladies who battle so hard against the little pests of the bed, and 
think they are the representatives of slovenliness, to learn that, 
in the Blue Mountains, east of Walla Walla, if one leans against 
a fir tree for a little while he will get the brutes on him. And 
this in the clear, pure air of the pine woods. 

We spent two days at the hot springs on Green River, in 
Washington Territory. The water issues from a narrow fissure, 
or, rather, seam, in the rock, which is a sort of trap. The seam 
runs at an angle, perhaps of 25 degrees, and for several hundred 
feet the hot water runs out in small streams, and near the sani- 
tarium is sufficiently large to furnish enough for 50 to lOO bath- 
tubs, and is elevated on the right bank of the rapid river sufifi- 
ciently to give a good fall to the hotel on the opposite side on a 
bottom stretch, which is covered by monster trees. These have 
been killed by fire and are now by slow degrees being cleared up. 
It cost $150 per acre to clean up one of these forests to fit it for 
cultivation or for grass. 

I said the burning of the forests absolutely burnt the soil. 



NORTHERN PACIFIC SWITCHBACK. 23 

This statement requires a supplemental one. The first burning 
only kills the trees. It is the second burning or clearing fire 
which consumes the roots and soil. The fir and pine, as well as 
the cedar, send out roots immediately under the surface. These, 
a year or so after being killed, burn like peat earth, and in the 
clearing fire the interlaced roots, and apparently the whole loamy 
soil is turned to ash. If the proprietors of these hot springs had 
capital they would soon make the place a favorite resort for those 
seeking health and pleasure. Hundreds of invalids now flock to 
it, and, I was told by themselves, to their very great benefit. 
We certainly enjoyed ourselves much, with the baths, the simple 
fare, and the trout fishing in the rapid river. 

The place is a few miles below the celebrated switch-back of 
the Northern Pacific, which here plunges over the Cascade 
Mountains by a succession of switches running zig-zag back and 
forth at a dizzy height among the clouds. 

Johnny called my attention, while going over this part of the 
road to the dense fog, and was quite amazed when finding we 
were running through a cloud, and that below it was raining. 
The zig-zag system of switch-road is a temporary makeshift, 
costing some $300,000 to hold the land grant, while a great 
tunnel is being bored. When finished it will be the next long- 
est one in America. It looks startling to see our huge locomo- 
tive — weighing, with tender, 104 tons — puffing and blowing far 
above us at the head of our train, while below another was tug- 
ging and pushing. In a little while this would be changed, our 
own engine would be pushing us, while behind the other mon- 
ster would be pulling. We could but feel ; God help us if one of 
the giants should lose either wind or muscle, for then we would 
soon dash down into eternity. 

This is a fine pass for the tourist to go over and aiiords a 
delightful sensation. It will be lost when the safer tunnel shall 
pierce the mountain, and thus save this, to me, agreeable, if dan- 
gerous trip. The Green River is splendid fishing ground, and 
one can soon fill a basket, some of the beauties weighing several 
pounds. They are caught of all lengths, from four or five inches 
up to two feet. We were quite surprised to find these entirely 
different from the brook trout of the east. It is rather a small, 
dwarfed salmon, is flatter, and lacks the huge mouth of our 
trout, and also lacks the thin, transparent cartilage, which makes 
the mouth of those of a New England brook. A trout in the 
east can pretty nearly swallow a fish of its own size. Not so 
here. Nor have these the delicious flavor which I thought, as a 
young angler, made this fish the height of good living. 

To-night we shall, steam over to Vancouver ; it takes eight 
hours. Thence we will take a run up the road, until the arrival 
of the Parthia, before we again start on our race with the sun. 



CHAPTER V. 

A RUN BACK INTO THE SELKIRKS ON A LOCOMOTIVE— GLACIERS 

AND AVALANCHES— SIAMESE PRINCES— SCENERY AT 

GLACIER HOUSE. 

Vancouver, B. C, August 27, 1887. 

My letters are manifold copies of my journal, made as I write 
my ideas, which are formed hastily in hurrying from place to 
place. I must not be held as to the accuracy of some of my 
statements, nor as to the duration of impressions made upon my 
mind by what I see or hear. 

In my last I stated that my star had set, and I was no longer 
lucky, because I had lost my trip to Alaska. But I picked up 
my star again. On the 21st we left Victoria for this place, to 
find what the Canadian Pacific people would do with us until the 
PartJiia should sail, and also to try to find our letters, which we 
were sure good friends at home had written us, but none of which 
had been forwarded. Letters were found, and Mr. Van Home, 
the soul of this great continental road, who happened to be just 
arrived, gave us transportation to the heart of the Selkirks, 420 
miles back, at Glacier House. We abandoned our fishing excur- 
sion to Harrison hot springs, and boarded the train for a longer 
visit to the great glaciers. We were handsomely entertained 
aboard the private car of Messrs. Edwin Walker, of Chicago, and 
Easton, of La Crosse, who were returning, with their families, 
from Alaska, and are all full of its glories. They made us full of 
substantial good things, while proving that Seward was his coun- 
try's benefactor when he gave $7,000,000 for the northwest cor- 
ner of this continent. The mountains along the Frazer River 
are now absolutely shrouded in smoke, and we all congratulated 
ourselves that we had come down the great canyon over three 
weeks before, when it was not so dense. We could now scarcely 
see the higher part of the foothills, less than a mile away. The 
upper ranges were covered and unseen. But the gorges of 
the river were as grand as ever. We passed through the Gold 
range and entered well into the Selkirks before the pall was 
lifted. 

From Rivalstoke, on the Columbia, I rode on the locomotive 
with jolly Billy Barnfather. May his face never be less round. 
A few good Havanas made him as good a fellow as ever strode 
an iron horse. A ride on a locomotive has to me always a fasci- 

24 



RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE, 25 

nation. But in a grand mountain country, around countless 
curves, over lofty trestles, upon the ragged edge of fearful preci- 
pices, and over deep gorges — such a ride is really glorious. We 
had to climb up 2,700 feet in about 30 miles. Our horse, with 
his tender, weighed nearly 100 tons. How he would puff and 
snort, and sometimes almost plunge, to drag after him his 
mighty load. One riding upon him, after a while, almost loses his 
own identity, and becomes a part of the huge monster. Look- 
ing forward upon the rails, merely silvery lines drawn upon the 
road-bed, we forget these are any thing more than marks to 
guide us on our way. The locomotive bends to the right or left 
like a drunken man as we rush along the curves, and one feels like 
a drunken man, who can walk straight if he wishes, but finds it 
pleasant to totter and zig-zag, so it be done not from necessity 
but from agreeable volition. The rails are but lines to guide, not 
to control. And so, on we rush, never quitting the line a hair's- 
breadth. Yonder is a monster barrier of rock right in our track. 
Who 's afraid ? At it we rush headlong, and bore a tunnel 
through the mass. See yon foaming stream, far down in a dark 
gorge. We rush across it on a trestle as light as gauze-work, and 
never tremble because of its being so fragile. How we careen 
and climb! We reach a little level track. We spin along it with 
a loud scream, and stop at a station as still as if we never knew a 
rnotion. Miners and road-workers gather about our side, and, 
while they admire, we are as quiet as a lamb, conscious of our 
power. At last we reach the presence of eternal ice. We have 
been three hours climbing a little over 40 miles. At Glacier 
House we bid adieu to our friends in the private car, and, although 
dead against monopoly, I cannot help feeling that it is not a bad 
thing to be a railroad magnate, and rather doubt if I would burn 
my palace on wheels if one should ever happen to be given me. 

Alaska may be grand, but when sitting on the piazza of the 
beautiful little chalet hotel, called the Glacier House, and watch- 
ing the sun climbing the mountains and rose-tinting the snows 
which lie like a light mantle about these lofty heights, and look- 
ing up at the great glacier with its crevices of delicate green, and 
the gray peaks of cold rock which pierce the blue vault of heaven, 
and hearing the mighty roar of the snow-white cataract, which 
tumbles over 1,000 feet down the precipitous foothills a few 
hundred yards before me ; when I sit in this wonderful val- 
ley, nested down among huge mountains on every side, no 
outlet to be seen, the lower mountain slopes covered with 
eternal snows, and the gray rocks above the snows, these mon- 
ster peaks so nearly covering me that I must bend back my head 
to look at them, — then I do not envy any one seeing other sights ; 
these are enough for me, and I scarcely regret that our ship had 
not come. 

It is a delightful thing to sit at Interlaken as the sun sinks and 



26 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

paints the pure brow of the Jungfrau — Switzerland's pride and 
glory. But there the Unpolluted Maiden is so far off that we 
cannot become familiar with her. Here the mountains are so close, 
that a bee-line drawn from where I sit would reach lofty peaks 
and ragged brows in every direction, at distances varying from 
two or three to perhaps six or eight miles. These mighty heights 
are lifted a mile to a mile and a quarter higher than the road-bed. 

The train from the east, meeting ours at Glacier House, 
brought Prince Devawongse and his nephews, the little prince- 
lings of Siam, and their suites. After a good dinner, we were all 
soon in single file, and armed with improvised alpenstocks, off for 
the great glacier which hangs over the head of the valley, and 
runs down it nearly or quite a mile at a slight elevation above our 
hotel. The newly cut pathway through dense forests and woody 
debris brought down by avalanches, and over rough bridges span- 
ning the foaming torrent, which issues from the glacier foot and 
flows down the valley, is more picturesque than easily trodden. 
The glacier, where we stood under it, was perhaps 120 feet 
deep. Rushing from ice caves are several torrents which 
we calculated were bearing down fifty odd thousand cubic 
feet per minute, thus showing the great size of the snow or ice 
field above. At one place our whole party of over 20 entered a 
beautiful grotto, large enough to hold twice the number. Above 
and around us were ceilings and walls of emerald green. The 
Siamese kept up such a din, that we feared their voices would 
cause masses of ice to tumble in upon us. In Switzerland guides 
forbid loud talking in such grottos. We made thern finally un- 
derstand this. We all cut and ate of the pure crystals, one of us 
remarking they may have been formed more than a century ago. 
No one has yet measured the speed of descent of this frozen 
stream. The ice we were eating may have fallen as snow before 
Washington cut the cherry tree, or even before Columbus made 
an egg stand on end. It was very pure and cold enough to be 
very old. The little fledgelings of Siamese royalty were wonder- 
fully delighted, and, like boys, began to cut steps into the sloping 
side of the glacier to try to climb it. For this purpose one 
of their party had provided himself with a hatchet at the hotel. 
The task, however, was abandoned when, in a half-hour, they had 
reached only a few feet. 

By the way, this is a very intelligent lot of Asiatics. The 
brother of the king speaks English with considerable purity, and 
the young princes well. They all have charming manners, and 
seem fond of fun. They are to sail on the PartJiia, and we may 
find them not only agreeable but valuable co-voyagers in the 
event we should conclude to visit Siam. If the prince will prom- 
ise us a genuine elephant hunt, we will do it. Willie, who is of 
an ambitious turn, talks of falling in love with a Siamese princess, 
but Johnny says " no Siamese in mine." 







DOUGLASS FIRS, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA. 



A VALANCHES. 27 

Two miles up the road from the Glacier House is the summit 
of the road in the Selkirk range. Here, from a small snowy gorge, 
run the silvery streams which carry the waters to the east and to 
the west. The one to the west becomes the lUeciliwaet River, 
which, until it reaches the Columbia, is always a rapid mountain 
torrent, affording the sightseer constant delight by its cascades 
and deep canyons. The time is not far distant when tourists will 
seek this locality as they now do the old scenery of Switzerland. 
When one first sees the inclosed valley about this station, he is 
not as much pleased by it as he will be after several days' sojourn 
among its mountain fastnesses. He has entered it through so 
much grand scenery, and his eye has become so accustomed 
to nature's majestic works, that he looks upon this as simply a 
part of the whole. But, after sleeping a night, he looks out in 
the gray morning upon the cold peaks, and then watches until 
the sun begins to scatter delicate rose tints upon the snow-fields, 
and after a while to lighten up the old glacier, then he sees the 
surrounding objects as a unit, and takes it in as one of the rare 
spots to be visited and enjoyed. Walk in any direction for miles, 
and the roar of cataracts is never absent, — -scarcely has the sound 
of one died out before another is heard. There are a half-dozen 
which give out the deep bass undertones of a great fall. 

We can study in the Selkirks the workings of the avalanche 
better than in any other locality I have visited. The tracks of 
hundreds can be seen from the railroad. The fall of snow is 
enormous. The air coming from the ocean over the Cascades and 
Gold range is surcharged with moisture. Farther west it is con- 
densed into rain. Here it becomes snow, and the fall is very 
great, some winters we were told, reaching 20, 30, or 40 feet. 
It becomes piled in vast masses upon the mountain heights. 
The sun in February and March pours down great heat. It is 
aided by the chenook winds, and loosens the snow masses in the 
upper gorges. Down the snow rushes in avalanche, reaching, it 
is calculated, at times a speed of 100 miles per hour. The largest 
timber is cut close to the ground or torn up by the roots. It 
sweeps into the valley, piling its debris of rocks and trees to a 
height of many feet. It sweeps to a considerable distance up the 
slopes across the valley ; but its destruction is not confined to the 
space the slide covers, for the rushing wind, pushed ahead of the 
descending mass, strikes the trees on the hill opposite and mows 
them down far above the foot of the avalanche. 

One can see many acres covered with upturned trees, all lying 
with their tops up-hill, as regularly as if they had fallen before the 
axe of skilled choppers. We saw one of these places stripped by the 
wind covering many acres, the upper limit on a very steep foot- 
hill being fully a quarter of a mile above the valley. Often the 
foothills have been denuded of trees for the width of a mile — not 
the effect of one snow-slide, but of those of many years. The young 



28 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

trees and shrubs covering the stripped avalanche-tracks varying 
in age from one to ten or many more years. In some places the 
second growth has become quite fair timber. The slide cuts a 
swath through the forest as sharp and well-defined as the track of 
a mower's scythe. One sees the old forests cut down to a line as 
straight as if drawn to a rule. Then there may be a growth 
of lo or 12 years. That has again been cut into by a later 
slide, and a third growth has sprung up. This, too, has been cut, 
and a still later growth has followed. We saw one place where 
we counted five different cuttings, or mowings, of this sort, the 
tracks covered by trees of different growths. In many places 
there seem to be slides every year. In these, the very soil has 
been carried away by the annually recurring avalanche. One sees 
the track of a small slide not over 50 feet wide, and yet the 
large trees have been cut down by it as if shaven. Sometimes 
the track of the slide has been from some cause deflected at a 
broad angle. In such places the trees had been thrown down to 
a considerable distance below the turn by the wind, which did 
not make the bend, as the snowy mass pushing behind it had 
done. I said I rode much of our way back to Glacier House on 
the locomotive. On the downward way I had a new experience. 
I rode on the cow-catcher from the time we struck the Thompson, 
through the canyons of the Frazer, and on to Vancouver. It 
was a delicious ride, free from dust and cinders, almost without a 
rough motion — as if I were sliding along at furious pace on a 
smooth surface, without any other motive power than that of 
volition. The locomotive being behind, I almost forgot his huge 
size, and felt I was simply skimming the road. It was by far the 
most glorious ride I have ever taken. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FROM VANCOUVER TO YOKOHAMA— AN OCEAN VOYAGE LIKENED 
TO THE VOYAGE OF LIFE— THE RISKS OF THE SEA— STORMY 
PASSAGE— A TYPHOON— PLUCKY JAPANESE SAILORS— OUR MIS- 
HAPS AND RECOVERIES. 

Steamship ''^Partkia," Pacific Ocean ^ Sept. ii, 1887. 

This is Sunday morning, and, although yet a thousand miles 
from Yokohama, I begin my ship letter for several good reasons. 
In the first place the day commences beautifully ; the sea is com- 
paratively smooth ; the ship rolls gently as she dips into or rises 
from the trough of a small swell coming up from the south, and 
by poising a table upon the top of a valise, enabling it to rise and 
fall with the ship's dip, I can write quite comfortably — almost the 
first time it could be done for some ten days. Secondly, it being 
Sunday, no one will drop in to propose " a little game of draw." 
Nor will any one pop in his head to find out if we wish to take a 
bet on the ship's run, or on the length of the mikado's mustache. 
One of our passengers is ready for a wager on any thing, from the 
weight of a Japanese mosquito's wing to the height of the geyser 
the next whale will spout. Betting, repeating poetry by the yard 
— doing it well, too, — and damning the fellow who named this the 

Pacific Ocean has been the mania of Dr. S for the past ten 

days. In short, I can have the day to myself. 

But what shall I say? What can I write about the sea and the 
passage ? Every one who has been sufificiently lacking in brains 
to write travellers' letters has written of the sea — the deep, darkly 
blue sea. But, after all, if the bulk of the world's population be 
idiots, why should not I join the procession? I can moralize 
thus : A sea voyage is a fair epitome of the voyage of life of one 
who has an abiding faith in a blessed immortality. The more 
uneventful it be, the happier. Behind, all is left. On the other 
side is the land of promise — the haven of rest ; a desolate waste 
covers all the space between. If there be calms, then all is 
blank— nothing for the eye to rest upon ; nothing on which to 
hinge a thought ; naught but stagnation and vacancy. If storms 
arise and billows are piled mountain high, then there is exhilara- 
tion, excitement, and awe, — a species of wild pleasure. But with 
this, the bravest heart, realizing its utter powerlessness to battle 
against nature's forces, so lavishly demonstrated all around, can- 
not help feeling a somewhat painful anxiety. Quiet and a restful 

29 



30 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

sleep becomes an impossibility. But let there be an ordinary, 
quiet sea, with its dignified ground-swell ; a breeze sufficient to 
break the crest of the swell into white-caps, and to cause laugh- 
ing, dancing ripples between, then one can watch it hour after 
hour, day after day, and, though impatient of delay, never grow 
weary. The clouds pass from horizon to zenith and across the 
sky in ever changing transformation, permitting the imagination 
to draw pictures in infinite forms, and to weave fancies in endless 
variety. The ocean's swells roll toward one, ever the same, yet 
one cannot resist the impression that each succeeding roll will 
differ from the one before. The eternal motion is suggestive of 
life, and life with motion is never the same from one moment to 
another. Life and motion make change a necessity. As one 
watches wave chasing wave, an effort is required to keep the 
looker-on from expecting a variation. Let him give thought free 
range, and then that most beneficent of God's gifts to man — hope 
— will enable him to watch and dream, and, seeing no change, yet 
ever hoping for change, he will watch and watch with constant 
interest. 

So the pilgrim on the voyage of life, knowing his haven of rest, 
his harbor of refuge, lies at the end of the unknown path he is 
treading, thankful for each day's blessing, pursuing the even tenor 
of his way, ever occupied enough to repel that absolute rest which 
breeds rust of the brain and stagnation of the faculties, hears 
sweet music in the sighing of the wind and a lullaby in the buzz- 
ing of the bee; drinks in sweet odors distilled by the morning 
dews and exhaled by the commonest leaf ; builds castles in the 
clouds, and sees fiery coursers in the cloud-shadows as they chase 
each other across the meadows and fields ; believing, hoping — his is 
a happy and prosperous voyage. But if his life be eventful in a 
race after wealth or a chase after renown in any of the walks of 
life ; if he mingles in the world's storms, where men clash against 
men, and people climb over shattered fortunes or the blackened 
names of others, — however surely he may climb the ladder, there is 
ever a rung higher than the one he has reached ; there is ever a 
rung which is beyond his grasp. However often he may win in 
the race, there is ever a goal which recedes as he approaches it. 

Some who go down upon the sea in ships feel a vague sort of 
dread ; but very many think themselves all safe when they lie 
down upon one of the great greyhounds between New York and 
Liverpool. Our captain told me of a thing which illustrates the 
dangers run even upon these well-managed monsters. One of the 
most famous ones was several days without an observation. On 
this account she was held down southward. She was thought to 
be south of Ireland. Officers were watching at night for stars; 
one of them was startled by seeing through a rift in the clouds a 
planet rising off the beam, whereas it should have come up over 
the bow. Presently he saw, what he thought, the north star ; 



THE NEW CAPTAIN. 31 

took an observation, and, on calculation on the basis that this 
was the pole-star, found the ship off the Scottish coast, and near 
400 miles north of where they supposed her to be. The clouds 
passing off proved the observation to be correct. Her course was 
changed, and none but the owners and officers ever knew what a 
wild race the greyhound had run. The ship's metallic frame and 
works had set the compass wild. 

When we returned to Vancouver from our run back into the 
mountains to sail in the Parthia we found she could not be ready 
before the 29th. The hotels of the town are very poor, and the 
fine new house of the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company will 
not be finished for some months. We therefore resolved to make 
a hotel of the ship. On going to the state-room assigned us we 
found it small and far aft, whereas our room on the Batavia, 
being one of the best, we were entitled to one of the best on this 
ship, which had been substituted for the other. We positively 
refused to accept the assignment, but put our baggage in one of 
the better rooms, which we were told was held for the Siamese 
princes. The shore officer, who is charged with getting the ships 
of this line ready for sea, was sent for. He conceded the justice 
of our demand, but said he could do nothing until the new cap- 
tain should reach there from the east. He promised, however, if 
we would rest quiet he would see that we should be thoroughly 
satisfied. Under this assurance we each took a good room and 
awaited events. 

On the morning of the 27th we were reading on deck when we 
saw a queer compound between an English farmer and a towns- 
man coming from the railroad station, with a sailor's gait so roll- 
ing that one would think he felt the pier beneath his feet flound- 
ering in a rough sea. He looked not to the right nor to the left, 
but marched over the gang-plank and up to dashing Captain 
Brough, who was standing upon the deck he had so many months 
trod as its monarch, but was so soon to leave forever. The two 
men shook hands. They were the old and the new captains. 
The contrast between the two was amusing. Brough, with his 
magnificent physique, was dressed in an elegant business suit. 
He would have been the admiration of women and the envy of all 
dudes. His own mirror always gives him an admiring gaze. The 
other looked as if he had never seen a looking-glass, and did not 

care a if he never saw one. His shoulders were of great 

width, and his chest as deep as that of a Devon bull. His body 
was made for a six-footer, while his legs had been sawed off for a 
man of five feet. His clothes had been hastily picked up at a 
slop-shop in Liverpool. His shoes had seen no blacking since he 
left the deck of the Alaska, and on his well-shaped head was a 
stove-pipe, built on a block which was unfashionable ten years 
ago, and which had been ironed each spring for a half-dozen years. 
In his hand he held a cotton umbrella. This was Captain Arnold, 



32 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the late first officer of the Alaska, and at one time of the 
Arizona, who has the United States and several other medals 
given for saving life. When he came from his cabin the day we 
sailed, dressed in his new captain's uniform, buttoned up so as to 
hide the shortness of his legs, he was an extremely handsome 
man, and looked every inch the captain of a great steamer. To- 
day there is no passenger on this ship who would not feel like 
taking up a cudgel for Captain Arnold. 

Arnold was first officer of the Arizona when she ran her nose 
into an iceberg a few years ago, losing in the contest some 25 
feet of her bow. As soon as the officers could get well upon 
their feet they piped up the men, and after finding them all right 
set to work to make repairs. All at once the whole crew was 
missing. Arnold found them in the cabin on their knees, where 
a clergyman had improvised a prayer-meeting. He went in with 
a stick and drove them out with an oath, telling them to get the 
ship right and then they might pray to their heart's content. As 
he was passing into the companion-way he met an old gentleman 
coming up with his valise in one hand and an umbrella in the 
other, as if seeking a hotel. A tipsy passenger who had been in 
the smoking-room at his cups was coming down, and seeing the 
old gentleman sang out in drunken humor : " Have a cab, sir? " 

On the 27th Captain Webber gave us the half of the smoking- 
room on deck, and placed some carpenters under our control to 
fit the room up according to our own fancy. We rigged up three 
berths in a room 9 by 12, with two windows on each side, a long 
sofa, large mirror, and, in fact, every thing to make us comfort- 
able for a long voyage. The partition was stained, and Japanese 
ornaments were hung upon the walls. My berth was run athwart 
ship, so as to leave the sofa free. The other room was fitted up 
for Prince Devavvongse and the little Siamese princelings. 
• Thus we had a room rarely given to travellers — on deck — 
plenty of fresh air and fine light. We have escaped all the un- 
pleasant odors of the regular below-deck cabins, and already 
begin, with a sigh, to compare our quarters with those we will 
probably have in the five or six sea voyages we must yet take 
before touching our native land. I am suspicious our fine room 
has gained for us the ill-will of other passengers who were not so 
fortunate. 

We pulled out from the pier at Vancouver on the 2gth at 5. 30 
A.M. in the rain. The fog which had covered the locality for 
weeks was lifted and gave us a fine view of the picturesque 
mountains which environ the town. We reached Victoria at i, 
and at 4.30 steamed away, having taken on the bulk of our pas- 
sengers and obtained the ship's clearance. 

We steamed through the narrow strait of Fuca, having a 
tolerably fair view of the high lands of the island to the north 
and the snow-clad Olympians on the south, and at half past three 



SEA-SICKNESS. 33 

took off our hats and made our bow to the mighty Pacific 
Ocean, upon whose vast bosom we now for the first time found 
ourselves. Our ship at once took her course — west, 14° south 
— and, what will seem strange to the uninitiated, this course 
never varied, in a run of 1,000 miles, more than a point or 
two, carried us up from latitude 49° 30' to 51°, within 70 
miles of the Aleutian Isles, and then varying not over two 
points brought us, in a further run of 3,300 miles, down to 
Yokohama, in latitude 35°. That is, this was the course as indi- 
cated by the compass. But that mysterious variation of the 
needle, which no one can yet explain, indicated what was very far 
from the true course. Why this is so, and why the needle points 
at all to the magnetic pole, will some time be known to man in 
his wonderful march in science, unless he and his researches shall 
be too soon blotted out by some mighty cataclysm of nature. 

During our first and second day's run we sighted the Abyssinia 
and two schooners coming down from the Aleutian Isles, possi- 
bly seal pirates, and had light-head winds but very rough seas. 
Before the end of the third day nearly all of the 35 cabin 
passengers were down with sea-sickness. The table was deserted 
by all except three or four of the passengers. Johnny and 
Willie were rueful and very pale about the gills. John soon 
gave in, but Willie was unwilling to confess, and tried hard to 
maintain the native hue of his resolution, until he heard that our 
old sea-dog of a captain, who had been from boyhood upon the 
seas, confessed to feeling "that worst of all diseases, nausea, or a 
pain about the lower regions of the bowels," and that the afore- 
said captain laid the whole blame upon this " blasted peculiar 
■ocean." The two boys lay in their berths wishing they had never 
seen salt water, and were as miserable specimens as Chicago ever 
sent abroad. One acknowledged he wished he were at home, the 
other that the Pacific were as dry as Sahara's trackless desert, and 
that he were on an oasis as big as Adam's fig-leaf, with no other 
friend than one faithful dromedary. Poor boy! He was full of 
pathos and bile, and would have poured out long Spenserain an- 
athemas against sea-sickness, had he not grown "inarticulate with 
retching." 

" He felt that chilling heaviness of heart 

Or rather stomach, which, alas ! attends, 
Beyond the best apothecary's art. 

The loss of love, the treachery of friends. 
Or death of those we dote on, when a part 

Of us dies with them, as each fond hope ends. 
No doubt he would have been much more pathetic. 
But the sea acted as a strong emetic." 

After the afternoon of the second day we had constantly rough 
seas, even when the winds were light. They grew stronger day 
by day, and scarcely varied from dead ahead. The swells grew 
higher and higher, and our ship, though she rode the waves like a 



34 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

duck, could not help poking her nose into the monsters pouring 
down upon her. The seas were generally from a decided southern 
direction forcing us to take the trough. 

My berth was built athwart ship, and on the fifth night, in 
the midst of a decided gale, I found myself now standing on 
my head and then on my feet. The seas rolled in continuously 
from the south in mighty billows, and a cross-sea came in over 
the bows so that the ship now rolled until she stood almost upon 
her beam ends, and then plunged forward as if she intended to 
run her bow clear under water. She would shake her head how- 
ever and send the water washing in foam clear back to the stern. 
Up she would ride the coming wave, and the wave she was leaving 
behind would wash over her stern and then roll back nearly 
20 feet above us. The main swells, coming from the south, 
washed the decks from fore to aft. One of these dashed against 
our deck-house with such force that we feared we would be car- 
ried into the sea. Some passengers, who could not bear to stay 
below — shut in by skylights all canvassed and lashed, and hatches 
battened down — were constantly having to dodge behind the 
house or leap upon lockers. 

On Tuesday, the 6th of the month, we all went to our berths 
tired and sore from the two days' thumping we had received. 
Living up to my maxim, " to make the most of the present day, 
and to hope for the morrow," I did hope that Wednesday, the 
to-morrow, would bring us bright skies and smooth seas. Alas, 
Tuesday had no morrow. 

Wednesday never came. 

It either got lost in the shuffle, or old Sol, seeing how we were 
handicapped in our race with his imperial highness, took pity on 
us, and instead of throwing Wednesday down so that it would 
fall upon the deck of our ship, dropped it so carelessly that it got 
■tangled in the chain of the Aleutian Islands, which lies like a 
necklace upon the bosom of the northern Pacific. And there it 
hangs and will hang forever. A dies non — a lost day. When 
the captain took his sextant in hand and pulled the sun down 
upon the horizon to read his true reckoning upon his fiery face, 
he found that instead of Wednesday, the 7th of September, it 
was Thursday, the 8th ; the Thursday which had no yesterday, 
for its day before was dead in its watery grave, in a pool a 
little way north, 4,000 fathoms deep. We had passed the i8oth 
degree of longitude. We were no longer west of Greenwich, but 
were east of it. We had one advantage. England can no longer 
boast that it gets up in the morning before we do. We are wide- 
awake, and are now out of bed ten or eleven hours before John 
Bull begins to rub his lazy eyes. 

Sea-sickness had disappeared for a day or two. But the terrible 
motion alluded to above sent some of the convalescents again to 
bed. The boys were free, however, and enjoyed hugely the 



WA VES OF THE PACIFIC. 35 

grandeur of our surroundings. I confess to feeling some little 
anxiety, especially when seeing the hatches being again battened 
down. I had been in a storm, or rather strong gale, on the At- 
lantic ; had seen far stronger winds, and had heard them howling 
far more fiercely through the rigging ; had seen the sea much 
whiter with storm-foam, but had never seen such monster bil- 
lows ; had never seen waves lifted upon the horizon till they re- 
sembled mountain peaks. I had once been in a seven-days' wind 
which bordered upon a gale, and had felt the ship bending and 
seeming to crack beneath my feet, whereas now this ship seemed 
to be as far from any such intention as she had when on a quiet 
sea. Yet when I looked upon these mighty seas coming in three 
huge monsters and then followed by nine attending watery war- 
riors, I could not help feeling an awe, which intensified the ap- 
preciation of the magnificent panorama, and which forced me to 
feel how impotent was man, when brought into contact with 
nature's titanic forces. 

On all oceans, waves come in regular succession — three large 
and then nine smaller ones. I had often tried to verify this when 
watching them upon the Atlantic, but had never been able to see 
such well-defined exhibitions as on the Pacific. The waves get far 
higher in a given wind, their crests are much farther apart, they 
roll in more regular columns, the hollows are better defined and 
extend for longer distances. Oftentimes one could look far to the 
south and then to the north, and see a hollow looking like a valley 
between mountain ranges. A wind arises, which we feel is 
a little affair, and yet in a very short time it will raise a heavy 
swell, and the swell will live for a long time after the wind 
has been lulled. The captain, who has been on ocean steamers 
for 25 years, says that to him, too, these characteristics were plain 
and emphatic. In his words : " It is wonderful how quick this 
ocean can get mad, and on what small provocation. The man 
who named it Pacific had not seen it in these high latitudes." 

The rapid rising of the sea cannot be better illustrated than by 
stating that one night we went to bed in almost smooth water. 
The afternoon had been fine. Several of us had sat upon the 
vessel's prow to watch an exquisite sunset — a long silvery band 
stretched along the western horizon, tinted here and there with 
delicate orange. The entire horizon was perfectly marked. 
Fleecy clouds and beautiful cumuli were spread over the sky from 
zenith to horizon. The air had for the first time a balmy feeling. 
Every one said: " Good weather now till we get in." I think the 
doctor would have given heavy odds on the prospect. The next 
morning we were up to see a beautiful sunrise. By the way, the 
few sunrises and sunsets we have seen here have lacked almost 
entirely any redness of hue. They generally are beautifully 
silvery, with occasionally a little suspicion of orange. I sat down 
to write. The wind was rising, and the ship's roll was increasing, but 



36 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

my table upon a valise so nearly counterbalanced the roll, that I 
was oblivious of any marked change without. Johnny was asleep 
on the sofa by my side. Thump ! a big sea strikes the ship ; 
water dashes upon our house, and I with difficulty escape taking a 
header over my table. The captain passed our window, I cried : 

" What do you think of this, captain 1 " " It beats . They 

don't do this sort of thing on the Atlantic. The ocean gets mad 
quicker than a cook-shop can get up a sixpenny lunch." I fear I 
will have to lay my stylus aside, for things look bad without, and 
yet it is not four hours since we were in a quiet sea. I will . 

It is now the afternoon of Monday. Just as I was writing the 
last sentence the ship gave a fearful lurch. Johnny was shot head 
foremost across the room and was met by the cushions between 

his and Willie's berth. Willie was laid flat on the floor. Dr. S , 

who was reading Byron, and I were thrown with the table and 
valise on top of the wash-stand on the other side of the room. It 
was some time more before we could recover from our confusion. 
And then what a wreck ! The table was on the opposite top 
berth, sofa cushions were on top of the doctor and myself. The 
bed was in a mass amid the debris of an ex-mayor and a New 
York doctor. The water had rushed through the crevices of the 
door and window, and our shoes and slippers were swimming around 
in a surf bath; a delicious bouquet of French grapes pervaded the 
atmosphere, caused by the smashing of some bottles of Pontet 
Canet ; books and camp-stools were going forward and back, 
beating the old-time breakdowns of plantation dances. Of course 
writing was over. 

Soon hatches were battened down and skylights were canvased 
and lashed. We had fore and aft sails up to steady the ship, the 
foresail was torn into ribbons and the others were " brought home." 
The wind rose and rose. The sea was absolutely white, looking as 
if covered with a mighty mantle of lace ; the rollers coming in 
were high, but not as much so as those of the 6th, for they were 
fully 25 feet, but these seemed more angry. At 3 o'clock the log 
showed a strong gale to have been blowing ; at 5 the wind was 
down, but seas were still high, and indeed continue so even now. 
This ocean gets mad quick, but takes a long time to cool down. 
The weather cools down quickly, but the water beneath keeps up 
its angry heat. All night the ship, which was compelled to keep 
her course in the hollow of the seas, rolled and rolled, and few 
people had any sleep. 

To-day all look wearied and sore from the 24 hours' thumping. 
I did not stand on my head, for on finding I could not follow the 
captain's joke, and tack about during the night, over a week ago 
we tore down my across-ship berth and got the carpenter to fix 
up the long sofa so as to give me a good berth on it. But to our 
tale. The captain and passengers have been discussing the gale, 
and, from the shifting of the winds as it ran, he has come to the 
conclusion that we were in the rim of a typhoon. 



A FL UCK V J A PA NESE. 3 7 

All the waiters, cooks, etc., are almond-eyed ; the sailors, except 
two boatswains, are Japanese. And plucky fellows they are. About 
dark after yesterday's storm, the line which holds taut the fore- 
mast's gaff broke in one of the heavy lurches of the ship. The 
gaff is the heavy timber which supports the fore-and-aft sails. 
This was pitching terribly, and helped to intensify the ship's roll. 

The captain rushed out. " What in is the matter with that 

gaff? Send some one aloft to stay it." Presently the Jap- 
anese boatswain's mate, Guru Muta (I want to remember the 
plucky fellow's name), went up to the masthead, ran a loose knot 
around the chain which holds up the gaff, and let it slide down as 
far as it would go. This was made fast below, and to some 
extent steadied it. He then took aloft another line, climbed down 
the chain to the end of the gaff, and securely fastened a rope to 
the point, and when it was made fast and taut below slid down it 
like a monkey. It was dark. The ship was heavily rolling, 
having been for the time thrown into the trough sea. The gaff was 
at least 50 feet above the deck, and was being jerked like a whip 
staff, to the right and left — now over the sea on one side and then 
as far over the sea on the other. The officers all agreed that 
sailors are rarely called upon to perform more daring feats. Two 
or three of us slipped into John's hand (this is his ship name) a 
dollar apiece when he came down. With a brave leader the 
officers of this ship say there is no danger into which these 
fellows will not go. 

Sept. I2)th. — We have seen very little of life on our voyage so far. 
One day, about the 1st, the sea was covered by myriads of Portu- 
guese men-of-war. They were very small, none of them exceeding 
two inches the longest way, but, with their little sails up and in 
such vast numbers, they gave the sea the appearance of being 
covered with whitish blossoms. Frequently there were eight or 
ten to a square yard. Whales spouting at a distance were seen 
every day, and a few schools of porpoise have rolled in long lines 
off our beam. Night before last, after the storm was over, a fly- 
ing fish about a foot long landed on deck. His wing fins measured 
over 20 inches from tip to tip. We had the winged adven- 
turer fried for breakfast, and found him delicious. The flesh was 
very white and firm, and resembled in flavor that of the English 
sole. All who tasted it pronounced it fine. We thought it quite 
an event to breakfast on a fish which of its own accord had 
jumped into our frying-pan. Some large birds of the gull order, 
dark in color, with narrow bat-like wings measuring fully four feet 
from tip to tip, have been with us for many days. Their sailing 
motion is simply perfection. I have watched one of them for a 
half hour without seeing a single decided flapping motion of the 
wings. They bend to the right and then to the left, wheeling 
several hundred yards from the ship, then dropping as far behind, 
and, without any apparent exertion catch it, though it was running 



38 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

fully 15 English miles per hour. Judging from the way they 
sail about us, I would say they fly from 40 to 50 miles an hour, 
and almost without a downward motion of the wing. Some 
officers say they are albatrosses, but I have looked at one when 
he was not over 30 feet away, and thought his bill too much 
pigeon-shaped. We have seen a few small albatrosses, but not 
close to the ship. A few sharks have been seen, and quantities of 
Mother Carey's chickens. 

Yesterday a Japanese man-of-war passed within a couple of 
miles from us. Being saluted, she asked from what port we came, 
and slowly steamed out of sight. It made us all feel we were 
not entirely out of the world. It is wonderful what small things 
AviU interest people at sea. Long before the ship came near us 
every glass aboard was out, and conjectures innumerable were 
made as to what and who she was. Doctor S. said she was a 
Russian bear, and advised the captain to send up American 
colors, so as to keep him from hitting us with one of his iron 
paws. Our one English passenger looked as if he would like to 
eat a Yankee disciple of Esculapius. 

When we sailed we expected to take sea baths every day during 
the voyage, and adhered to the resolution for several days, but 
found the water up near the Aleutians too cold for any beneficial 
effect. The temperature sank down as low as 53 Fahrenheit. On 
the morning of the nth it went up to 60 degrees, and on the 1 3th 
up to 72. This rapid change was owing to our having reached 
the celebrated Japan stream, which pours up from Japan along 
the Aleutian chain to the shores of Alaska, and then down upon 
British Columbia. The loth was the first day one could tread 
the steamer's deck in comfort without a warm overcoat. I am 
now, on the 13th, sitting in my shirt sleeves, and, though all the 
windows of our deck-room are open, I am in a decided perspira- 
tion. We are in latitude 36 degrees 57 minutes, and within 
400 miles of Yokohama. We have only 35 cabin passengers 
and 40 or 50 Chinese in the steerage. These last are packed 
like sardines in a box. Their miserable looks during our 
roughest days were really amusing. Some of them are proba- 
bly flush in funds, but they spend as little as possible in going 
home. Their American earnings are to last them through life. 
Our saloon passengers are an agreeable family, and the table 
is a social gathering. 

The Siamese eat by themselves : not from any disposition to 
exclusiveness, but the table would not accommodate us all at 
once, and they naturally preferred being together. We find them 
quite good fellows. The little princes are models of boyish 
politeness. They have been in Scotland a year and a half at 
school, and are decidedly intelligent for their ages. Prince 
Devawongse is the brother of the king, the four young princes the 
King's children. The prince informed me to-day that they were all 



THE SIAMESE PRINCES. 39 

children of different mothers, none of them being of the chief wife 
or queen. He and one of his aides sleep in the room adjoining 
ours. They all, however, spend the evenings and most of the 
day in his cabin when it is unpleasant to be out. Their amuse- 
ment when on deck consists principally in shooting at a mark 
with air-guns. To the smallest, who is not over nine years old, 
they are proficient marksmen. The suite pay great respect to, 
but at the same time are thoroughly familiar with the prince, and 
when shooting or playing with the shuffle-board delight to beat 
him. 

We notice, however, that at night he and the children are the 
principal talkers. We hear every thing said through our board 
partition. While all speak considerable English, yet in their 
intercourse they talk Siamese. The prince evidently finds no 
difficulty in making his jokes appreciated. Like " Souter 
Johnny," he " tells his queerest stories, his courtiers laugh in 
ready chorus." He seems very desirous of gaining information, 
and to-day told us if we should go to Siam he would do what he 
could to make our time pleasant. He is a man of considerable 
information, and is evidently desirous that Siam should be among 
the progressive nations of the East. He is what with us would 
be called undersized, but is well-knit and very graceful. In play- 
ing shuffle-board he shows practice in manual exercise, and with 
his air-gun, at the word, comes close to the bull's-eye. Altogether 
one would pronounce him a man of much intelligence and refine- 
ment of feeling, and a thorough gentleman in manners. 

The boys are quite up to the average of boys of their age in 
intellect. All step like young martinets when using the pistol, 
but are thorough youngsters when at their sports. One day one 
of the little fellows and I undertook a walk of two miles on the 
deck. I had to acknowledge he beat me 150 yards in the course. 
When I told him he could have done still better, with polite 
refinement he assured me he had done his best, and that he had 
the advantage in having rubber soles to his shoes, and therefore 
was not entitled to the praise given him for his fine walking 
qualities. They all dress in good taste and know how to deport 
themselves in European costume. At home their dress is quite 
different. To-day two of them, the smaller ones, came out in 
sailor dress, the uniform of their father's yacht. They were jolly 
little tars. 

Oh, the Pacific ! the mighty, the changeable, and mad Pacific ! 
It is all again white, and a strong head-wind is raising a consider- 
able sea. It is now the morning of the 14th. To-night we will 
sleep in Yokohama. But I fear we will get in too late to have a 
fine view of Fuji, the great mountain which receives the first 
obeisance from travellers coming to Japan. 

Last night was hot and sultry. The doctor bet a quarter there 
would be mosquitoes aboard before morning, even if we were over 



40 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

200 miles from shore. The water in the bath was up to 82 
degrees this morning, and although the wind is making it difficult 
for me to manage my paper, yet I find my coat disagreeable. By 
the way, it will probably be of interest to know the temperature 
of weather and water throughout our voyage. Commencing on 
the 29th of August and coming down to the 14th of September, 
the temperature of atmosphere has been day by day as follows : 
70 degrees, 63, 60, 56, 60, 56, 60, 58, 55,53, 53, 59, 63, J^, 83, 84. The 
water has been 60 degrees, 61, 58, 57, 55, 55, 55, 54, 54, 54, 54,60, 
60, 72, 78, 82. Although it has been generally too cold for being 
on deck in comfort, yet if we had to make choice of another run,, 
as cold as ours has been, or as warm as it is to-day, we would cer^ 
tainly choose the cooler. One can pile on clothes to keep warm, 
but it is impossible to lay off one's meat and sit up in bones 
to keep cool. 



CHAPTER VII. 

BEAUTIFUL AND BIZARRE JAPAN— ITS CHEERFUL MEN AND MOD- 
EST IMMODEST WOMEN— ITS MECHANICS AND BABIES, 
HOUSES AND CITIES. 

Yokohatna, Japan, September 30, 1887. 

I WOULD write of the land of the Shogun (Tycoon) that was ; of 
the land of the Tenshi (Mikado) that is. I would write of it, but 
what and how? Where can one find words to pen-picture a fairy 
land — where colors to touch up a glowing dreamland ? How shall 
I catch and hold forms evolved by a kaleidoscope constantly 
revolving — forms made of myriads of pieces all differing from any 
before conceived of — all colored in tints before unknown and un- 
expected ? One comprehends descriptions of things unseen and 
unknown, through comparisons with things known. Here^ 
however, every thing so differs from the same thing elsewhere, 
that comparisons can scarcely be made, and if attempted must 
assume the form of antithesis. 

Japan offers to the eye a land beautiful, soft, picturesque, and 
dreamy. And yet there is rarely to be seen a curvilinear profile 
among its mountains and hills. Rarely do undulations mark the 
sky line. All is peaked, notched, broken, jagged, and rugged. 
Plains, as such, are few and of comparatively small extent. 
Mighty cones pierce the sky, and the valleys are nowhere sloping 
and wavy, gentle and soft. They are all canyons, gorges, and 
rough chasms. Yet, with this all true, her mountains delight and 
rest the eye, and her valleys invite one to quiet rambles, and 
make one long for a loving eye to look into, for a loving heart to 
sympathize with. Here nature started to make a land for the lair 
of hideous monsters, and ended in making a land for dancing and 
laughing fairies. No ocean once rolled in vasty depths over the 
land and, subsiding, left it in mountain and hilly ranges, or in 
sunny plains and mellow valleys. Nature conceived the island in 
one of her angriest moods, and brought it forth in agonizing 
labor. She rocked and reeled, shook and shrieked in maternal 
throes, and lined upon her offspring the marks of her woes — 
marks intended to terrify and to breed intensest awe. But, like 
all true mothers, she yearned toward the child of her sorrow, and 
loved it for the suffering it had caused. She cuddled it upon 
a mother's breast and warmed it by pulsations from a mother's 
heart. She cicatrized its ugly scars, and painted them in colors 

41 



42 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

distilled from rainbow hues, and then spread over every deform- 
ity a mantle of flowers and bloom. She wove garlands and hung 
them upon every precipice, and festooned with wreaths every 
mountain crag. She broke the rushing torrents into feathery foam, 
and sent them laughing, dancing, and singing on their short race 
to the surging sea. 

Japan is almost entirely of volcanic origin, and as far as we 
have seen or heard, its every part was thrown up from the bowels 
of the earth in volcanic eruption. The eruptions did not cease, 
however, when the molten rocks and hissing lava were piled into 
rough and craggy hills or lifted into mighty cones — one, two, and 
nearly three miles high, — for then came showers of ashes of many 
neutral tints, tinged with orange and vermilion, purple and choco- 
late-brown, and covered the craggy pinnacles with earth which is 
pleasing to the eye even where no vegetation grows, making a 
soil where noble forest trees, graceful shrubs clothed in bloom, 
trailing and climbing vines, and flowers of many kinds and of in- 
numerable dyes have found a congenial home. Vegetation of 
endless variety and of tropical luxuriance is spread over mountain 
and valley, hill and gorge, moulding the rough and jagged peak 
into rounded dome and smoothing down the frightful gorge into 
a smiling valley. Nature repented of her angry conception and, 
touching her whelp with a wand more powerful than Prospero's, 
reared it into a love-winning beauty. 

The land abounds in gods — 80,000, we are told, — hideous mon- 
sters begotten of men's fears, born of the quaking earth, and 
breathing volcanic fires. Besides these, there are many millions 
of dead fathers, now worshipped by their descendants as house- 
hold gods, answering to the penates of ancient Italy. To prevent 
the possibility of the line of ancestral gods being broken, parents 
failing of sons have always had the rights of adoption, an adopted 
son becoming, by the act, imbued with the power of continuing 
the line of his adopted father. It is said that though passion- 
ately fond of their children, a parent immediately invests the new 
boy with all the sentimental characteristics of blood offspring. Had 
man never reached Japan's shores, these gods would have re- 
mained unborn, and the land would have been the home of 
laughing fauns and of dancing, gauzy sprites. 

But man came, along, long while ago, and erected himself into a 
nation, when or before David harped and danced before the ark of 
the Lord, and before the iron age of Rome was yet in its cradle. 
For 2,500 years we know that the nation has lived. Its men 
have been beasts of burden, and have done the labor else- 
where performed by the speechless brute and by the soulless 
machine. During all these long ages they have toiled from early 
dawn to latest twilight — toiled for their bare food, — clothes they 
have had none and needed not, and yet to-day these men, while 
cringing and fawning in their expression of politeness, are other- 



THE JAPANESE WOMEN. 43 

wise dignified and manly in their bearing, quick and graceful in 
their movements, ambitious and greedy for knowledge, cheerful 
and light in their mood. They drudge for a pittance, and spend 
a part of the pittance in visiting and enjoying romantic localities, 
where hills and valleys speak in poetry, and streams and brooklets 
ripple in song. And man's other and sweeter self — woman — she 
who has here ever been a thing to be sold for a day, a month, a 
year, or for life, at her father's will, and, whether as child, hand- 
maid, concubine or wife, has had no will of her own — a very 
slave! And yet this woman, but half covered in the field or upon 
the road, and in the public bath as free from clothing as was 
Maiden Eve when she blushed in bridal purity before her Adam 
— this woman is smiling, sweet, coquettish, plump, and undulating, 
and seems ever to be veiled by an invisible mantle of modesty. 
Naked, she does not blush, for she is not so for lewd purposes, or 
for the purpose of attracting a look, and is not ashamed of the 
mold in which she was cast. She does not invite a gaze, and 
seems not to know when one is given. Clothing she wears for 
warmth and adornment, and not for concealment, and if she does 
blush, it is because she has not about her the pretty things she 
wears to win admiration. As wife and mother, she dotes on her 
baby, and is true to the man she deems her lord, whether he be 
her husband for a week, a month, or for years. Formerly she was 
often sold by her father for a longer or shorter period. Now, 
under a more generous law, she is free, and yet she oftimes 
mortgages herself for a term of months or of years, to lighten the 
burden of those who brought her into the world. Often one 
gives herself for a day or a week for a price, and yet wears no 
sign or look of a wanton, and, coming out of her bondage, takes 
the name and place of wife, and bears the duties of mother, with 
no scar upon her forehead, no blush of shame upon her cheek, 
and no brazen smirk upon her lips. The bridal bath washes her 
clean, and the marriage ceremony wipes out the past. The wife 
is her husband's solace and sunshine. She is in many respects his 
head servant, serves him at his meals, and yet her smile is his sun- 
shine, and her prattle his sweetest amusement. 

Whence came these men and these women ? From what stock 
did they spring? Of what race are they born? They are neither 
Malay nor Mongol. They are neither Aryan nor Semitic. Far of¥ 
here, for ages cut aloof from the world, they have many of the 
marks of the Caucasian race mixed with Mongolian, and resembling 
the latter more than they do any other. But the difference is 
marked, and the resemblance may be the result of an origin 
arising from like causes. The Mongolian Chinaman, wherever 
placed, is a plodding, burrowing, conservative animal. The 
Japanese is volatile, energetic, and progressive. The one is 
saturnine and slow, the other is quick and -ever seeking the 
joyous. How came they here? Is there any thing reasonable in 



44 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the general idea that God started all living things in one original 
pair of each? Was Adam the father of all men ? I do not believe 
one drop of his blood flows in the veins of the heathen, cellar- 
burrowing Chinese. When nature was ready for man, did not 
God have gardens of Eden wherever he willed man should be? 
There is nothing unfaithful in the thought. Were not the 
Japanese the offspring of the foam which dashed upon their sea- 
girt shore? I am no scientist, I am but a dreamer. Man was 
made to laugh as well as to weep. He is foolish if he does not 
laugh a great deal more than he weeps. He was made to dream 
as well as to be awake. If he keeps his conscience clean, and 
his liver in good condition, his dreams will be rosy, even his 
wide-awake dreams. I am happy when I dream, and dream I 
will ! Just now I dream of Japan — wonderful, poetic, bizarre, 
beautiful, grotesque, artistic, plodding, singing, weeping, laugh- 
ingi sighing, smiling, gentle, and loving, undescribed and in- 
describable Japan. 

I closed my last letter on the morning of the 14th, expecting 
to be in Yokohama that night. But voyagers propose, and on the 
Pacific, according to my observation, do very little disposing. 
Before noon we were in a strong wind, and dead ahead. We 
scarcely more than overcame the strong current which was run- 
ning against us. We were all very much put out, but I did not 
afterwards regret it. About three o'clock the clouds began to 
scatter, and soon we had bright sunshine, but with a stiff wind. 
Toward the south heavy clouds were hanging. These took a 
form rarely seen ; a dense mass, apparently not a quarter of a 
mile high, and leaden in color, moving eastward, slowly, but 
evidently rolling and whirling in wild frenzy on a centre. Over 
it all was a bright blue sky. It made a sort of horizon, so 
distinctly outlined was its top. Eastward and westward we could 
see its limits. We took it to be not over 15 or 20 miles in 
extent. Luckily, it did not come nearer our ship than three or 
four miles. It was a small typhoon, and passed partly over 
Yokohama, and was one of the most violent of the season. The 
whole storm was contained in a cloud compact, distinct, and roll- 
ing like a low bank of fog. 

We lay off Yeddo bay until light the next day, and then 
had a beautiful sail up to the city. The bay is a very beautiful 
one, and was white with the sails of the early fishermen. We 
counted 237 sails at one time from a single point on our deck. 
Low mountains rose almost from the water on each shore, all 
green and treed. To our left was the small island Vries, with 
the volcano Idzu-no-Oshima, lifting from the sea 2,600 feet. 
About his head was wrapped a turban of smoky mist, which 
changed while we looked, into a conical cap, pointed high above. 
There was no flame visible, the smoke alone showing that the 
mountain was an active volcano. At times it belches forth flame 



THE JINRICKISHA. 45 

as well as vapor, and is said to be very grand. Villages were 
planted under the hills, along the bay, and down upon the water, 
and here and there picturesque houses on the brows. High in 
the distance, with his perfect cone piercing the sky, mighty Fuji- 
Yama kept watch and ward over the land. 

Fuji is the name, the affix Yama being placed as a mark of 
distinction or honor, strictly interpreted Sir Fuji — the one grand 
mountain. There are many others over 10,000 feet high ; this 
cone, rising almost from a plain, is claimed to have been thrown 
up when Bewa Lake was sunk, since the Japanese nation has 
existed, and was the act of the gods, to show that the island was 
completed, and that the work was well done. Half-way down his 
slope a belt of fleecy clouds hung like a graceful scarf thrown 
around a fair woman's bosom. 

Immediately after our ship dropped her anchor, swarms of 
small, odd-looking boats, propelled by huge sculling oars and 
manned by boatmen in every kind of costume, from the slender 
clout-rag up to a coat of matting hung from the shoulders over 
dusky forms, crowded about the ship. There was shaking of 
hands among the passengers, good wishes for the future, and all 
of us soon found ourselves upon Japanese — not Asiatic — terra 
jirma. 

Passing the custom-house almost pro forma we were whirl- 
ing along the beautiful bund for the Grand Hotel, in jinricki- 
shas. Parenthetically, I will say that all Asiatic cities with a 
foreign quarter have along the water a sort of boulevard, planted 
with trees, broad, and well paved, the promenade of the foreign 
population, and called a "bund," and I will further say that 
the Grand Hotel would do credit to any European city. Its 
rooms are large and airy, its cuisine admirable, and its charges, 
though high for Japan, would be cheap in America or England — 
$3.50 a day, Japanese money, each dollar now worth 75 cents, 
United States coin ; included in this is good claret. 

I will now speak of the jinrickisha (man-power wagon), so that 
the term and its use may be fully understood when used here- 
after. It is a small, two-wheeled covered cart, not unlike a trot- 
ting sulky, with light shafts united in front by a cross-bar. Its 
body rests on two elliptical springs, with a lifting top like the 
American buggy. It is well cushioned and springy, and is drawn 
by a man between the shafts, who pushes by a hand on each, and 
when heavily loaded, by leaning against the bar which unites the 
ends of the shafts. They are ordinarily propelled by a single 
man, or where extra speed is desired or too much weight is im- 
posed, by a second or even a third man. The second man pulls 
in front by a strap over his shoulders, and by his hand pulling a 
single trace ; occasionally the wagon is pushed from the rear by a 
third one. With a single man the usual speed is about five 
miles an hour on good roads and with light weight. With two 



46 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

men running tandem, I have made ten miles in an hour and 20 
minutes. With two men to each wagon, our party ran from 
Nikko to Utsunomiya, 23 miles, in four hours, with two 
short stops. The first twelve miles, a general down grade, was 
made without a single halt. When we went up to Nikko, the 
grade being an ascending one, we took a little over five hours. 
Each wagon had in it a man and a heavy satchel. The charge 
for this run was each way $1.26 a wagon, or ninety-five cents our 
money. The usual charges in cities are from eight to ten cents 
a run, or ten cents per hour by day, fifteen cents per hour at night 
or in a rain. This price is doubled if an extra man be taken. It 
is a charming mode of travelling, especially in a city. Your 
horse is told where to go, and he goes, without rein or instruction, 
and with never a grumble or a kick. The rider sits up in real 
otiimt cum dignitate. The rider calls out " hi — i," when any other 
vehicle is in his way, or a pedestrian does not give room. Every 
one moves out of the way pleasantly, and with often a joke for 
the man and a smile for the rider. 

Politeness is the one marked virtue of this people — not a 
politeness of mere etiquette, though there is a great deal of that, 
and very studied and labored it is — but a politeness evidently 
coming from the heart, genuine and kindly, and extended to the 
laborer as well as to the gentleman. Women, children, and light- 
loaded men step aside with cheerful alacrity to let the poor jin- 
rickisha man pass, which is most charming to behold. If he 
happens to jostle against one he is met with a joke. Not once 
have we yet seen a sullen or angry look from any one who was 
requested to give way. At home we would have been cursed or 
blackguarded dozens of times had we made the runs here done 
through densely crowded streets. When a large party is out in 
jinrickishas they follow each other in close proximity. If a 
bxidge, rut, or bad place is encountered, the foremost man utters 
a cry, which is caught up by the next, and so on to the last, each 
evidently trying to lighten the labor of the others. At night 
each man carries a Japanese lantern. The effect of these in a 
long train is very bright in a dark, unlighted street, or on a sub- 
urban road bending along a hill-side. Added to this the cries of 
the men, the meeting of a hundred others, all rushing, bending, 
turning, and twisting in the tortuous lanes or narrow crowded 
streets, you can readily see how charming such a run must be. 
The men in cities wear short, tight trunks from just above the 
hip to the upper thigh. They start out with a sort of tunic or 
shirt over the shoulders ; if the weather be warm they throw off 
the upper covering as they run. In the country, instead of the 
trunk, is simply a clout about the loins, narrow and full in front, 
running between the legs in little more than a ribbon, and caught 
on a band over "the hip. In full garb a party will start from a 
village or town. As they run, one after another the men strip off 



JAPANESE HOUSES. 47 

their light upper garment, and are stalwart, sweating Adams, 
clothed with a scanty fig-leaf. This is done, too, in the cities, by 
men drawing natives, or loaded vehicles, but is to a considerable ex- 
tent avoided by those who run for foreigners. In Tokio and here, 
those about foreign localities wear the trunks and close-fitting 
shirt, always blue, resembling our undershirts. This garb is or- 
dered by the authorities out of respect to foreign ideas. The 
natives, themselves, men or women, are not shocked by an almost 
naked man, and foreigners soon grow accustomed to it. 

I made my fastest run with a couple of splendid fellows when 
going at night to call upon Viscount Yoshida, formerly Minister 
to America. The distance was long. The men started out 
clothed. When and how I did not observe, but as they ran I 
found them almost stark naked, and reeking in sweat. It is 
a novel sight to see a dozen wagons with their 24 men 
ahead of you, with calves of great muscularity, and legs finely 
formed, only a little bowed, owing to the habit of sitting on their 
haunches, instead of on chairs. The streets here are in many 
localities densely packed, and not over 12 feet wide. Lan- 
terns hang before every store. People carry gay lanterns at 
night. They move about a great deal like bees about a hive. 
The kuruma (rickisha) men moving in and out among these add 
greatly to the picturesqueness of the scene. 

There are in Yokohama over 4,000 and in Tokio 27,000 of 
these wagons under license, and in all Japan about 175,000. 
Thus you can understand how important a part the jini-ickisha 
plays, both in the economic and in the scenic make-up of this 
strange island. It is not generally known that this charming 
little wagon may be considered a gift directly from heaven, and 
that, too, through the intervention of an American. One of our 
missionaries at Nagasaki having a wholesome dislike of hard 
walking, invented the thing some 26 or more years ago. 
His Yankee ingenuity took hold upon Japanese fancy more 
quickly than did his theology. The thing is supposed to be purely 
Japanese, and has been to some extent adopted in all Eastern 
lands. 

You have often as children played at housekeeping, or some 
other mimic and lilliputian make-believe of the doings of grown- 
up people. The first impression made upon me of a Japanese 
city was that the people were playing at running a town. In the 
native quarters of Yokohama and in other towns, except in the 
public-building quarters of Tokio, the streets are mere lanes 
in width. There are no sidewalks. The houses are mostly of one 
story, and where of two the upper story is very low, the first 
about 10 feet and the other not over 8. They are almost exclu- 
sively of wood, and from 10 to 14 feet in width. The first floor 
is flush with the street. The majority of the second stories, of 
pure native style, are set back from the front from 4 to 6 feet. 



48 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

The first story is all open, the second closed in by lattice work. 
Glass is rarely seen. The shop is simply the front part of the lower 
story. First comes a space 4 or 5 feet wide on the ground level, 
then a raised platform, say from i to 2 feet in elevation, and 
running back 8, lo or more feet. On this is the work-shop or shop 
for sale of goods. Behind this for living purposes is another 
slightly raised portion, running back a greater or less distance to 
meet the requirements, or in accordance with the means, of the 
owner. There are no partitions, yet the house can in a few 
moments be divided into several compartments. 

The customer or visitor stops on the ground level, and leaves 
his clogs, sandals, or shoes, and mounts the next platform in his 
stockings or bare feet. These upper platforms are highly polished 
and partly covered with mats. All of the latter are practically 
three by six feet, and are the unit of measurement of floors and 
walls. For example, a room is so many mats large. The polished 
floors and mats are of scrupulous cleanliness. The shoe or sandal 
is not permitted to tread upon them. The dealer and his 
customer or visitor sit or squat upon the first platform, smoke a 
pipe together, and go through their negotiations or chat. The 
pipe, by the way, does not hold more than a half-thimbleful of 
tobacco, and is emptied in three to five puffs. On the inner 
platforms the family reside. As I said, the whole is open wide to 
the street. At night wooden shutters are put up, closing the first 
shop. These are sometimes in solid wooden panels, but more 
frequently of light, open lattice-work. The upper platforms are 
divided into smaller compartments by putting up panels like 
window sashes, very light and prettily varnished. On one side of 
this is pasted thin paper, light and translucent. These panels sit 
or slide in grooves. Thus a house of say 12 by 25, feet may in five 
minutes be made into four or five separate rooms. The shutters 
and papered panels are set up during the day in recesses built for 
the purpose in the outer walls of the house. Each recess has in 
front a sliding door, which closes up so as to hide it. The walls 
of the house are of a single thickness of board, on which light 
laths of bamboo are tacked, and over this a coat of plaster is 
spread. Among the better classes this plaster is of lime, with 
picked oakum in lieu of hair. In the poorer houses it is of mud 
and straw. The coat of plaster is so thin that the whole wall is 
not much over two inches thick. Every thing about a house 
is deliciously clean in appearance, but there is no protection for 
the nose. The sense of smell here seems to be proof against bad 
odors. All night soil is preserved and sent to the farms. Thus a 
traveller too often catches odors which are not by any means 
agreeable. A true traveller, however, who is resolved to learn and 
enjoy, soon finds that his olfactories rapidly become obtuse. To 
any who cannot school his senses and is made uncomfortable by 
the custom of a people visited, my advice is to pack up traps and 
go home, where he can be master of the situation. 



FINE MECHANICS. 49 

The streets being so narrow, the houses so small, the absence of 
Tieavy teams and wagons, the people all engaged in what seems 
such light work, or in doing heavy work in such a small way; the 
masses moving back and forth, the swarm of men, women, and 
children made me feel that I was among thousands of people who 
were engaged in a game of make-believe playing at keeping town. 
There is no rush and no hurry, except among the jinrickishas. 
The merchant is as deliberate when one enters to make a purchase 
as is the city official where the modern craze for civil-service 
reform deceives the well-meaning mugwump. He does not seem 
to care an iota whether you purchase or not. If you bow low, he 
will return your salutation by bringing his brow almost to the 
floor, and then wait with an appearance of patience which would 
become a man who expected to rival Methuselah in longevity. If 
you wish to purchase a staple article, he has one price, and does 
not seem to care a baubee whether you purchase or not. If you 
be a curio hunter he will ask for his old bronze, lacquer, or ivory 
an exorbitant price, and is not a whit offended if you offer one 
third of what he asked. If you make no offer and start away he 
will invite you to make a bid. He will declare that the thing cost 
him so much, that it is 500 or 1,000 years old, and will end in 
taking half or a third of his first demand, and will bow to the floor 
in thanks for your patronage. Truthfulness is not a Japanese 
virtue. His Grace Archbishop Osouf assured me that it could be 
said the masses were great liars, and that politeness might be put 
down as their single virtue. Well ! it is a virtue, and it tells 
in every-day life, and if one cannot shut lies out by lock and bolt, 
one can at least stuff cotton in the ears and avoid being too much 
offended by the vice, while enjoying the cheering effect of what 
appears to be genuine politeness and good-will. 

The Japanese are fine mechanics, and, though slow and delib- 
erate, do their work with great precision and with exquisite finish. 
They do all work just oppositely to our'mode. If it were possible 
they would commence a house at the roof ; indeed, it may be 
said this is often done. The ordinary house has corner stud- 
supports ; these being erected the roof is put on, and the house is 
then built under and up to it. They draw the plane toward them 
instead of pushing it from them, and make glue-joints for the 
commonest purposes. They make their mortises so exact that 
water cannot creep between the joints. They use the saw by 
cutting toward the hand instead of from it. All saws are very 
wide and have a straight handle, and yet they will rip a plank 
fifteen feet long so exactly and truly that a smoothing plane will 
dress it down perfectly straight. Few nails are used in the erec- 
tion of houses. Corner-studs are mortised in to the sills so closely 
that they stand as if nailed and bolted. The plates are held with 
equal tightness. The siding is then set into grooves cut in the 
studdings. When an old house is torn down its material, being 



so A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

free from nails, becomes good timber for other purposes. One 
constantly sees a carpenter ripping up an old sill or post for new 
work. There are no saw-mills to speak of. Timber of the largest 
size is ripped by huge hand-saws worked by a single man. A 
contractor assured me he had seen a log five feet through thus 
cut. He was a Scotchman, and therefore told me the truth. I 
myself saw a log quite three feet through being cut into inch 
boards. The log was about ten feet long, and was laid on a 
frame at an oblique angle. The sawyer sat under it and cut 
it up before removing any of the boards. Timber is hewn in the 
woods into squares or octagons. Then it dries perfectly, and is 
generally cut into boards on the ground where the house is being 
erected. They do nice work in wood, but are slow. Their wages 
are about 45 cents a day. When I use the term dollar and cent I 
speak of the Japanese dollar and cent, one fourth less, at present 
value of silver, than our money. Americans here assure me they 
would prefer paying our wages and getting the thing done 
promptly, than to await the dilatory movements and slow prog- 
ress of the good and cheap native workmen. 

The common stonework is very fine. There is no such thing 
as a rough wall on a natural bed. All stones are cut and set in 
exact joints ; not in line work, but cut to fit one upon another in 
all shapes. Random rubble is, I believe, the technical name for 
this style. Bridges, piers, canals and moat walls are thus built, 
and many of the stones are of great size. In Tokio there are 
many miles of walls, from 30 to 60 feet high, built of stones 
weighing from 100 pounds up to several tons, and all with 
joints so nice and true that no cement has been used, and none is 
necessary. It is a wonder how these poor down-trodden people 
have done such vast work with no horses and no machinery to 
help them. All hauling, or nearly all, is done by men. I saw 
a single man drawing or pushing a load of nearly 300 brick 
to the new palace at Tokio from the dock over a mile away. 
At the castle hill, which is quite 100 feet high, several men 
assisted. It is a common thing to see two, three, or more men 
pushing a load such as a heavy dray horse would draw in America. 
Two would be at the shaft, the others push. They step to a 
word all the time. The shaft man would utter something like 
" seough " ; the others would catch it and reply together 
" seoughah." During the day in quarters where heavy loads are 
being drawn, or heavy work being done, some such cry as this is 
heard in every direction, though I will say, parenthetically, that 
one of the charms of these cities is the absence of loud and deaf- 
ening noises. All great cities of Europe and America have their 
voices. One can almost imagine he recognizes a distinct, peculiar 
voice in each. In the still of the night it is marked, and never 
silent. A Japanese city after J2 o'clock seems to be absolutely 
asleep. There is no voice. It is as silent as the country, and 



CHILDREN AND BABIES. 5.1 

if one awakes in the small hours he hears no sound. All is 
hushed and quiet. In some localities, however, there are many- 
trees. In these he hears the hum and song of insects ; but this is 
the voice of the country, not of the city. 

Every class of people seems engaged (I mean not the noble, 
but the people), and all ages do their share towards the common 
support, men, women, boys, and girls. Children under ten are 
the merriest, laughingest, busiest little bodies imaginable. One 
can almost pronounce this the paradise of the young. They are 
in a profusion I never saw elsewhere. They are as thick as flies, 
and flies here are as abundant as the sands on the seashore. 
Children are in the shops and stores where their parents are at 
work. Indeed, one would almost think that in the finer stores 
little ones are kept tricked out in their nicest to make the places 
attractive. In the streets they are running, skipping, and jump- 
ing everywhere. Babies are strapped to the backs of their 
mothers, or of sisters scarcely larger than themselves. One often 
sees a dozen or two boys and girls under ten at all sorts of play, 
one half of them having babies on their backs. Oftentimes when 
the little nurses are playing regular romps the little ones are 
sound asleep, their heads hanging down and flopping from side 
to side as if their little necks would break. 

Here in front of the hotel, when the tide was out, I saw hun- 
dreds early one morning seeking mussels, mosses, and sea-weed. 
Little fellows not over ten, with babies strapped to them, were 
wading about gathering shell-fish. When they would stoop on 
hands and knees the baby would almost stand on its head. I can 
say I have seen hundreds and have as yet heard but three babies 
crying. 

Little ones of two and three years sometimes have dolls strapped 
to them. Not once have I seen a doll in the arms. The children 
are nurses to a greater extent in the country and in villages than 
in the cities. For there the mothers are at work in the fields. 
In the cities, where a certain amount of education is nearly 
universal, children over six years old are at school. We went 
to a private school at Tokio. Having left our shoes at the 
entrance, we were kindly and, in fact, rather proudly received 
by the teacher and his girl assistant. In one room some 30 
little ones were squatted down. The teacher had upon a black- 
board a translation from one of our Readers. It was the story 
of a little boy who did not like to go to school, but preferred to 
play and ride the donkey, at least that is what our guide said it 
was. Parenthetically, I will here say we have in our employ the 
cashier of a wholesale tea-house. He is a Christian, was educa- 
ted at the mission school, speaks good English, and is intelligent. 
He desired a holiday. We pay him $40 a month and his ex- 
penses. He is our companion as well as guide. Through his aid 
we get far more information than we would from an ordinary 



52 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

guide, who can say but little more in our language than is neces- 
sary to make purchases, or to carry one to places of interest. 
We rarely look into a guide-book. But to return to our kinder- 
garten. The teacher would read a sentence, pointing to it, the 
children repeating after him. He did this for a while in short 
sentences, and then went over the whole. In perhaps lo or 15 
minutes the little fellows all read the whole story aloud without 
his assistance. They read and recite it in a sort of chant. Think 
of it, my little friends, away off here in Japan, where 30 years 
ago no foreigner, except, perhaps, a Chinaman, had been for 300 
years, a lot of little boys and girls, each in a gown little more 
than a shirt or night-robe, are learning the same lessons taught 
you in the public schools. 

But I suspect it will interest the j^outhful yet more to tell how 
these little fellows learn to write. In one room was a writing- 
class. They, too, were small ones — some, I thought, under six. 
The order of the tenshi (mikado) is, that none younger than 
that age should go to school, but their parents smuggle them in 
to keep them out of mischief. They were all squatted in pairs at 
a rough board, which served for a desk. Each child had a lot of 
coarse paper, with a string through one end of the sheets. This 
is a book. They do not write with a pen, but with a small 
brush, like a water-color brush, only rather more pointed. With 
this they write, not from the left to the right and on the top of 
the paper, but on the right side of the paper, from top to bot- 
tom. Their letters resemble the characters seen on a tea-chest. 
They use some 48 Chinese characters with their own letters. 
These signs express not only a whole word, but now and then 
short sentences. It was funny to see a beginner making his let- 
ters. One little fellow covered the half of his sheet with one or 
two. The page looked as if a web-footed bird or a cat had 
stepped from the ink upon the copy. And one toddler had 
nearly as much ink on his face and hands as upon his paper. 
They do not use blotters or let the paper dry ; their writing 
paper is porous, and sucks up the ink as fast as it is written. 

After 10 or 12 years of age, the poorer children do their share 
of work to support themselves and their families. They work in 
the fields and in the shops, and help their fathers to pull and 
push. One sees a 12-years-old boy at an oar, doing his full share 
of the work of sculling, while his father or employer pushes the 
other. Parents are devoted to their children. Obedience and 
assistance are demanded of the latter to their parents. If a man 
dies before his son is of age, the eldest son is exempted from mil- 
itary service, because he must take care of his mother and 
younger brothers and sisters. In the evening one frequently 
sees a man walking with a baby in his arms. He is resting the 
mother, or letting her prepare the evening meal. 

In this city there is a population of about 140,000 ; in Tokio 



BLIND MASSAGE OPERATORS. 53 

about 1,300,000. We have been on the go all the time, and as 
yet have not seen a single beggar and but one drunken man, al- 
though saki, a sort of rice brandy, is very cheap. I mentioned 
this fact to the archbishop. He laughed, and told me that when 
a Japanese got drunk he at once went to sleep. By the way, for 
the benefit of those who met the good bishop when he was in 
Chicago in 1884, I will say I called upon him and had a very 
pleasant evening with him and Father Magawine, who was also 
in Chicago. I bore to the bishop a letter from Father Roles, 
and was charmingly received and pleasantly entertained. The 
Catholic Church has baptized 2,000 within the past year. There 
are over 35,000 communicants in the kingdom. The bishop 
feels proud of, and thankful for, the success of his 65 priests. 
They are all Frenchmen, and are from the Academy of the 
Sacred Heart in Paris. 

I said there were no beggars. Even the blind here support 
themselves. They form a guild of massage rubbers. From 
dark to 12 o'clock one can hear their fifes on the streets of every 
town. Knowing who the poor fellows are, their call has a very 
plaintive sound. They walk the streets all alone, are never in 
danger of being run over, and seem to have the good-will and 
assistance of all who meet them. It matters not how hurried a 
jinrickisha man be, he never runs against or jostles an " amma." 
They come, when called, into the houses, and rub down patients 
for 10 cents, taking from 30 to 45 minutes to do the thing. We 
have now used them several times, after a heavy day's work, and 
find them fully equal to any professional massage-operator we have 
tried at home. Indeed, I like them better. They are very gentle 
and rapid in their movements, have soft hands and quicken the cir- 
culation without bruising or irritating the surface. Their sense 
of touch is so keen that they seem to find the parts of the 
patient's body most needing manipulation. I had a slight at- 
tack of sciatica. I could not speak a word of Japanese to tell 
the "amma" where I wished him to do the most rubbing. 
Yet he found it. The sciatic trouble passed away in a day or 
two, leaving a tenderness in the small of the back. My next 
" amma " found the tender spot without a word from me. The 
sense of touch told them where the soreness was laid. Would 
it not be a good thing to teach our blind to perform such 
duties, thereby making them self-supporting and far happier? 
Nothing so conduces to happiness as a feeling of independence ; 
as the knowledge that we can choose our own paths and fear- 
lessly travel them, looking to God, and our own powers alone for 
help. While, on the other hand, a sense of helplessness depresses 
above all things else, and depresses all the more when the sufferer 
is conscious of no bodily pain. Existence then becomes a spe- 
cies of continuous nightmare. Thank God ! man can, in time, 
school himself even against this dread sorrow ; but, oh, the agony 



54 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

of the lesson ! The blind are, of all physically well men and 
women, the most helpless and the most to be pitied. God, in 
his infinite goodness, generally leavens their hearts with sweet 
patience, and blesses them with the best of all visual powers — 
the power to see the green pastures, the flowery meads, the 
undulating hills, and smiling valleys of the eternal world to 
come. But these sweet pictures of hope would be none the 
less charming if the poor, sightless beings were taught to earn 
their daily bread. This is done in heathen Japan, and should be 
a lesson to the Christian world. Of course, in America their fees 
should be in keeping with the general prices paid. I understand 
they are fairly patronized here, and earn a fair livelihood. I sup- 
pose it is true, for at a village I sent out for one. He came in, 
but was not blind, but was a hale man, and a samuri in rank, who 
had adopted the blind man's avocation, there being a lack of the 
blind in that locality. The samuri were the military and half- 
noble class before the tenshi (mikado) broke the power of the 
shogun (tycoon), and stripped the daimios of their feudal rank. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RIVERS, FARMS AND FARMERS OF JAPAN— FURTHER CHARACTER. 
ISTICS OF ITS PEOPLE— ITS HOTELS, FOOD AND FLOWERS. 

Hiogo, Japafi, October 14, 1887. 

I STATED once before that my letters home were manifold copies 
from my traveller's book of the impressions made upon me by 
things along the wayside as we run rapidly through a country. 
Such impressions cannot be other than crude and, to a con- 
siderable extent, ill digested. But all I aim at is to carry along 
the reader with me, and, if possible, to enable him to see what we 
see and to enjoy what we enjoy. If I make mistakes I can only 
say I do not aim to, and the mistakes are probably what the 
reader himself would have made had he been the traveller. In 
my former letter from this strange country, in my endeavor to 
enable one to take a bird's-eye view of Japan, I fear I may have 
misled. I stated that it was wholly of volcanic origin, and that 
there were but few plains, and those of small extent. For the 
purpose intended — i. e., to make a picture — the statement was 
proper. On a topographical map the islands would thus appear. 
There are, however, in the far north and the far south stratified 
formations and a few in the central portion, but these latter are 
of metamorphic rocks, or the estuaries of great rivers. There are, 
too, some plains which are of considerable extent, either along 
the sea-coast or in the river valleys. Some of these are ten to fif- 
teen miles across near the sea, narrowing as they run back until 
they are lost in the mountains. One of the striking features of the 
country is the great number of rivers and their size when compared 
to their length. The climate is so humid and the snow and rain- 
fall in the winter and spring so great, that the number and size of 
the streams are wholly disproportionate to the extent of the coun- 
try drained, as compared with other countries one visits. Not 
only is the rainfall great, but the dews are very heavy. These 
things make a constantly moist earth, and cause streams to 
abound. In May and June the volume of water brought to 
the sea by the rivers is very great, and occasionally causes much 
destruction by inundations when some of the restraining dykes 
give way. It may safely be said, I think, that nearly all the broad 
river valleys were originally swamps and morasses. But huge 
dykes varying from 10 to 25 feet in height, erected at enormous 

55 



56 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

cost of labor, confine the streams to moderate dimensions and 
give the country the bulk of its arable land, which swarms with 
a dense population. 

We arrived at this place late this afternoon. We have now 
traversed in jinrickishas 500 miles of Japanese roads and about 
100 miles by rail. The latter we passed over — in both directions 
— at a speed not greater than 18 miles per hour. In other 
words, we have moved slowly enough to make minute observa- 
tions of every thing seen. We have been a month in the country, 
and all the time among its people. We have passed through 
13 towns and cities, with populations of from 5,000 to 1,300,- 

000 and through many hamlets and villages of 300 or 400 peo- 
ple up to 2,000 and 3,000. We have passed vast acreage of cul- 
tivated fields, and seen many thousands of people engaged in 
their daily avocations. We have slept in their houses and eaten 
of their food. We have seen them reeking in sweat, but never 
in filth. We have seen them in hilarious mirth, but never once 
in violent anger. We have seen them in their nakedness, but 
never once in any thing like lewdness. We have seen them in 
toiling poverty, but have never seen a single look of sullenness or 
of despair. We have seen them in abject poverty ; we have never 
seen them begging alms, except in a few instances of total blind- 
ness and decrepit age. We have seen them in every way shocking 
all preconceived ideas of decency and modesty, yet we have never 
noticed a single look or expression which would show that any 
one was aware things were being done which modesty would for- 
bid. We have seen children without a stitch of clothing covering 
them, playing with children gotten up in their holiday finery. 
We have seen a man pause from his work, with only a hand's 
breadth of cloth about his loins, and talk with a neighbor in his 
richest visiting clothes, and the naked man wore as lofty a mien 
of dignity as his companion did in his robes. We have met 
women in the highway naked down to the hips, and saw no look 
that betokened a single thought of shame, and within a few hun- 
dred yards we would meet a beautiful, well-clothed woman whose 
eyes would drop in pretty modesty because we gave her a look of 
involuntary admiration. There is here no such thing as conven- 
tional decency or conventional modesty. With a high civiliza- 
tion — ^in many respects very high — the people still seem to be, to 
a certain extent, in a state of animal nature. Is the conscience 
seared, or has conscience never been awakened by a sense of sin? 
The psychologist must solve the problem and answer the query ; 

1 can not. I am still in a species of amazement among this incon- 
sistent, this great, this little, this bright, yet grovelling and, to a 
western man, immoral people. 

Each year, as I grow older, I find the tastes of my early years 
more and more strongly returning to me. Born and bred on 
a farm, I find myself more interested in agricultural pursuits and 



RECEPTION AT HOTEL. 57 

productions, than in the works of great cities. I shall, in accord- 
ance with this disposition, devote some of my writing to what we 
have seen and shall see of farming. But as we have seen this 
farming not by going upon the farm, but in passing through them, 
it will not be amiss first to tell how we travel from day to day. 
For this purpose, imagine us four men seated in pretty little cov- 
ered two-wheeled spring carts, each man with a satchel between 
his feet, and each cart drawn by two native, nearly naked, men. 
We approach a village or town ; and having two pullers they dash 
through it at a tremendous pace with a cry of warning now to a 
pedestrian, then to a street vender, or to the drawer of another 
cart ; every one good-naturedly gets out of the way of the for- 
eigner and gives him a look of keen curiosity, never one of dis- 
courtesy. The children stare at the gray-bearded man, and per- 
haps crack a joke at his expense. The Japanese are a closely 
shaven people, and a full beard attracts attention and does not, I 
suspect, win any admiration. The pretty young girls give a look 
of kindly interest to the two fair young men of the party, and 
they both look conscious of deserving it. On we dash at not far 
from a ten-miles-per-hour gait. Suddenly the shafts of the cart are 
turned into a little court before the best hotel of the town. The 
place is in an immediate stir. The landlord comes forward with a 
bow, or rather a succession of bows. If we have one kuruma 
(wagon) man the landlord's hands reach to his thighs as he bows. 
If we have two they go below the knees, often to the ankles, as he 
bends low at the hips. 

The landlady is on her knees on the raised platform of the 
house, and bows till her forehead nearly touches the floor. Just 
behind her are two or more pleasant-looking, and sometimes very 
pretty, handmaids (waiter girls), prettily dressed and with most 
elaborate coiffure. They bow as does the mistress. Every strag- 
gler and neighbor stops to see the strangers. We get out on the 
ground-floor, which is, in fact, but an extension of the street, and 
paved like it ; our luggage is taken in, and we at once take off our 
shoes and leave them on this floor. In our stocking feet, or half- 
slippers, made of hairy deerskin, we mount the raised platform of 
the house, which is, say, two and a half feet in elevation, and is 
beautifully polished, as smooth as any rosewood piano. These 
floors are generally black and highly lacquered. A shoe, sandal, 
or clog is never allowed to scratch or mar them. 

One of the waitresses at once brings a lacquered tray, on which 
is a small teapot and four tiny teacups, not much larger than an 
egg-holder. We each drink down a cup of tea. It is very weak; 
hot water, not boiling, has been poured -over the tea and is at 
once poured into the cups. It has at least the merit of being hot, 
and, though weak, gives forth a delicate and delicious aroma. 

The whole lower floor of the hotel is open to the street, resem- 
bling an inhabited shed rather than a house or system of rooms. 



58 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the kitchens fully visible, and the cooking apparatus all ex- 
posed. This last is not very elaborate in small inns, consisting of 
a stone- or earth-covered hearth, with small pits, over which are 
two, three, or four tripods, or suspended from the ceiling are 
chains, on which are hung the pots. The fire is of a few sticks of 
wood, or of charcoal covered over with ashes when not used, and 
quickly brought to a flame by a few small sticks or splinters ; 
such quickening of the fire immediately follows the arrival of a 
traveller. In the larger hotels there are several oven-like stoves. 
There is no chimney, the smoke going out by a funnel-like 
apparatus through an aperture above. 

We are then conducted up a very steep stairway of perfectly 
polished boards. We pass along a sort of upper porch or long 
gallery, and are shown our rooms, or, rather, room, with a sort of 
partition above hanging down one or more feet. Between this 
hanging partition and grooves in the floor, light, paper-covered 
panels can, in a couple of minutes, be inserted, so as to divide the 
one big room into two, three, or more smaller rooms, as the 
exigency may demand. The floors of rooms are all covered with 
white, immaculately-clean matting. There are no tables, chairs, 
or beds. Two waiter-girls bring in four cushions. We are 
four, our guide travelling with us as our equal. He is intelligent 
and a Christian, educated by Dr. Hepburn, the Japanese scholar. 
A small lacquer platter, with a little brazier, is set before us. It 
contains what would seem to be a smooth mass of fine ashes. 
Hidden in the ashes are a few pieces of burning charcoal for us 
to light our pipes from. Then a fresh pot of tea is served. Shaw 
(our guide) goes to the kitchen to show them how to boil an egg 
and to fry a fish. Very soon our supper is ready, and our two 
pretty waitresses bring in four trays with two covered bowls, a 
couple of boiled eggs, and pieces of fish on each tray. In one 
bowl is a sort of vegetable soup : it is made of tarro, mushrooms, 
a piece of radish, and a half-dozen other odd ingredients, which a 
Japanese can enjoy, but which an American swallows only to 
ward off grim starvation. The natives cook almost exclusively by 
boiling. In the other bowl is a soup, the main ingredient of which 
is a half-cooked piece of fish. One girl has a large, covered, lacquer 
box, holding about a peck. This is filled with hot rice. She 
squats beside it, and replenishes our bowls as fast as they are 
emptied. We eat our boiled eggs. Even a native Japanese cook 
has not yet found how to get any odd-tasting thing inside of an 
unbroken egg-shell. We eat our fish, and do justice to the rice. 
Perhaps we have brought with us a loaf of bread and a can of 
butter. This helps out amazingly. We politely pretend to swal- 
low a bowl of soup ; Shaw helps to get away with one or two, 
besides his own. He declares it delicious. Only sovereign-reign- 
ing grace can wipe out the sin of such a fib. Our supper is ended. 
Every thing is cleared away. If either of us has dropped a grain 



BATHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 59 

of rice on the mat one of the girls picks it up with the daintiest 
of fingers. 

Then comes in a man with a huge pile of " futons," a sort of 
thick wadded comforter. These are doubled and spread upon the 
floor, one in each compartment, formed by the separating grooves 
in the floor. Sometimes they bring sheets, but very rarely. A 
Japanese robe, fresh and clean, is served, however, for each guest. 
We cannot sleep on wooden pillows, so a comforter is folded 
across the head of the bed for a pillow. By the way, the Jap 
uses a small rounded pillow of wood, about ten inches long and 
five to six inches high, with a depression into which the back of 
the head and the nape of the neck fits and rests. This prevents 
the necessity of re-dressing the hair each day. Women now, and 
men formerly did, get up a very elaborate coiffure, which lasts for 
several days, if not weeks. It takes several hours to get into per- 
fect form the heavy tresses of the women. Travellers frequently 
get into romps with the hotel girls. The care with which the 
latter guard their heads is amusing. 

Then the girls tell us the bath is ready. We each undress and 
put on a robe. A girl to each of us shows us to the bath-rooms. 
These are down-stairs, and have only an open Japanese screen to 
shut off the gaze of the habitues of the house. The tub is a 
round wooden vat, about four feet deep. You put your foot in 
to try the temperature. You nearly shriek. The girl laughs, and 
empties a pail of cold water in. You then wait for her to go out. 
She does not budge. You can't, to save you, think of Japanese 
enough to tell her to go. Finally, by a lot of awkward signs, you 
get her beyond the screen, but not an inch farther. There she 
stands and waits, as innocently as did good old Eve when Adam 
poured into her willing ears his first declaration of undying affec- 
tion. There are things as well as times that try men's souls, and 
call for heroic courage. One can scale the bristling wall, can 
march into the mouth of a hot-throated cannon, can mount the 
scaffold with the shining axe glistening in the sun, can tell the 
girl he loves how he would win and wear her, can make a maiden 
speech in the House of Representatives, but these are easy tasks 
compared to that of getting into a hot bath with a pretty Japan- 
ese girl looking at you through a rattan screen — looking at you, 
too, with as much sang froid a.s if she were seeing a three-months- 
old baby stripped of its little flannel shirt. Finally patience 
gives out, you drop your robe and jump in. Good heavens! 
the pail of cold water did cool the thing, but the furnace at 
the bottom of the tub is still adding caloric. You feel much 
as did the poor Japanese martyrs when, a few hundred years 
ago, the heathen wretches boiled them into grease. You 
forget the girl and every thing else, and jump out thoroughly 
clothed, i. e., in scarlet skin. The pretty girl's musical 
laugh rings in your ears, and her soft mellow eyes take in the 



6o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

hue of your half-boiled carcass. Ah, these are things which try- 
men's souls! 

After the bath, partitions are drawn between the several com- 
partments, and we lie down to sleep. The partitions are a sort of 
very light sash, fitting into the grooves above and below. In lieu 
of glass, these sashes are glazed with translucent, thin paper, and 
are so easily adjusted that the girls make four rooms in as many 
minutes. We get into a doze. Then we hear a noise as if two 
or three freight trains were being switched on the floor. The 
outside wooden screens which close the house are being put in 
around the balcony. I said the house is open on all sides, but at 
bedtime it is all shut up by means of sliding screens, which during 
the day are hidden in niches in the wall. By this time we begin 
to itch. They say fleas abound in Japan. I have not seen a single 
one. But, when wakeful, imagination or reality has made them 
crawl about me in reckless redundancy. At last we get to sleep, 
and early the next morning take our breakfast, — about the same 
thing as the supper, with the addition of large bowls of tea pre- 
pared, under Shaw's supervision, in European style. We pay our 
bill, and here comes in a singular feature in Japanese hotel science. 
One night our bill will be three yen, the next night, in exactly the 
same sort of house, the same accommodations will cost us six or 
seven. I suppose the size of our bills vary with the elasticity 
of conscience possessed by the several landlords. All, however, 
are cheap compared with American charges, never as much as a 
dollar and three quarters for two meals and lodging. Our jin- 
rickishas are ready, for we engaged them the night before. The 
men who brought us return over the road, and rarely ever con- 
tinue with us the second day. We dash out of town to new ex- 
periences as we hurry along. 

I said that the people in cities seem to be playing at running a 
town. One feels the same way about the farmers. Every thing 
is on such a small scale, and is carried on with such wonderful 
niceness, that one can scarcely realize that farming here is not for 
amusement, but is the business of life, and a very earnest and hard 
business at that. There are no such things as farm-houses ; all 
live in villages or towns. There are no such things as barns or 
out-houses in which to store crops. Many farms are of one acre 
in size, and very few of ten. 

On one of these little holdings the farmer will have his rice field 
and a dozen other crops. Every thing is grown by irrigation. 
Although it rains so much, no one relies on natural waterings. 
Everywhere there are irrigating ditches. The little fields are each 
perfectly level. A farm of two or three acres will have a half- 
dozen levels. In the flat valleys they all appear nearly the same, 
but in the upper valleys, and on rolling ground, or on the hill or 
mountain sides, each field is a terrace to itself. In the latter they 
are of all shapes, often only a half-dozen feet wide, zig-zag, round- 



JAPANESE FARMING. 61 

ing, and in every imaginable shape to suit the configuration of the 
land, so that each is perfectl}/^ level, and will hold water. The 
water irrigating one field drops down to irrigate those below. 

The farms all look like small market gardens near our cities. 
The plow is used only in a few localities, and then not for loosen- 
ing the soil, but to throw up beds. We have so far not seen a half 
dozen, and only near Kobe. All ground is dug and perfectly pre- 
pared. The spade and fork are unknown, but spade-like and fork- 
like hoes are wielded, as with us one uses the ordinary hoe. Not 
a weed is ever seen, and not a foot of ground is wasted. Between 
the rice patches the little ridges which confine the flooding waters 
are planted with peas or some other crop. The land is all double 
cropped. In May the wheat and barley is harvested. Immedi- 
ately follows rice, corn, millet, or root crops. One sees rice, sweet 
potatoes, egg-plant, millet of several varieties, turnips, carrots, 
tarro, beans, cotton, lilies, squash, sesamum, maize or Indian corn, 
buckwheat, hemp, flax for white cordage, sugar cane, dishrag 
plant, tea plant, indigo, mulberry, pear trees, and many other 
varieties of food crops side by side in little tiny fields and in all 
stages of maturity, and all of these on farms of from one to ten 
acres. In the large low-lying river valleys the rice fields are ap- 
parently of considerable extent, but on close observation one sees 
that even here few fields are much over one eighth of an acre in 
size, but all being on a common level present the appearance of 
one or a few large fields. In one locality we saw tea plantations 
of several acres, the possessions of a single man, but these are ex- 
ceptional. We saw rice being harvested near Tokio a month ago, 
and yet even in this locality, where it is warmer, the bulk of the 
crop is not yet ready for the sickle. October is the regular har- 
vest month for this staple. It is //^^ crop of the country. Former- 
ly all rents and all taxes were paid in rice. A rich man's income 
was spoken of as so many sacks of rice. All lands belong to the 
government. Under the new and better system of government all 
rents and taxes are now paid in money. Formerly a comparatively 
few Daimios held the entire country in fief, paying to the govern- 
ment so many sacks of rice. They let the lands to the tenants, 
tithing every thing, and virtually owned the masses. The Daimios 
are now a thing of the past, and tenants pay fixed rents to persons 
who rent from the government tracts of greater or less size. The 
farmer now, although he is bowed down in abject poverty, neither 
feels like nor has the air of a slave. 

Lands are fertilized to some extent by applications of solid 
manures, but the great dependence is upon a liquid form. Every 
thing is saved that can be made to enrich the crop ; all night soil 
is carefully preserved. Conveniences are erected along the high- 
ways and byways, so as to prevent any waste. Coarse grass and 
refuse straw is burnt, and the ashes mixed in the vats. Deep 
holes are sometimes simply dug in the ground, but more gener- 



62 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

ally pits, walled with stone or wood, are sunken near every field. 
Into this the manure in liquid form is deposited to ripen and per- 
fect itself. Men, boys, and women then carry it in pails on the 
two ends of a bearing pole to the fields, and with it water the 
growing crops. When one meets one of these liquid manure car- 
riers on the road it is safe to hold one's nose until the windward 
has been gained. Women and men on their knees weed the fields 
as at home we weed a tiny flower-bed. 

As one crop begins to ripen some other crop is planted be- 
tween the rows, so as to get a good start before the outgoing 
one has been removed. Even the tea plantations, when consist- 
ing of small plants, have turnips, carrots, and other crops planted 
between the rows as soon as the July picking is finished. The peo- 
ple seem to be wonderfully educated as to the rotation of the crops, 
and land which has been in cultivation for many centuries yet 
produces marvellously large crop returns. This year the people 
will be well off. The rice crop is said to be almost unprece- 
dented in the yield. This is the one great food crop for the 
Japanese. Rice, fish, and roots, they live on ; meat they rarely 
ever taste. They eat the roots of several of the lilies which, 
in America, are grown for ornamentation. The water-lily and 
the lotus is cultivated to a great extent, where the lands are 
low, and cannot be drained, not for the flower, but for food. 
The population of Japan is about 37,000,000 and is supported on 
11,258,000 acres of cultivated lands, or about 12 per cent, of the 
whole area of the empire, and exported, last year, of the products 
of these acres, $21,000,000 of silk, $18,000,000 of teas, and nearly 
$3,500,000 of rice. The export of the last is almost, if not en- 
tirely, to China. Of her teas exported, nearly $18,000,000 went to 
the United States. 

Rice is all transplanted by hand in rows from five to ten inches 
apart, and in exact checks. The people certainly deserve much 
for their wonderful industry, and nature has been very lavish in 
her favors. The waters have a boundless supply of fish. Fish 
and rice may be said to be the food of the people, and yet the 
bountiful ocean not only supplies her share of the food, but sup- 
plies also a large amount of the manure which enriches the soil 
to produce so abundantly. Fish for this purpose are carried to 
quite long distances into the interior. 

The forests of the mountains, too, are very bountiful of nuts. 
The chestnut is abundant and of great size. In all books I have 
read of this country the area of the islands composing the em- 
pire has been fixed at nearly 1 70,000 square miles. In a book of 
statistics published May, 1887, by the government, the area of 
all the islands having an area of one vi — there are 112 of these — 
is fixed at 24,794 vi. This would give an area of from 144,000 
to 155,000 square miles, or in the neighborhood of 90,000,000 
acres, or two and two third times the area of Illinois. About 



JAPANESE FLOWERS. 63 

80,000,000 of these acres are waste or forest, and do not even 
graze cattle of any kind. Buddhism has discouraged the eating 
of animal food. The acorns of the forest would feed millions of 
hogs and yet no hogs are grown. The grasses on many of the 
hills would feed millions of cattle, yet there are not 2,000,000 
of horned cattle in the whole empire. The ordinary native grass 
is a sort of bamboo grass, with a sharp, hard, serrated edge, and 
which, it is said, cut the entrails of horses and sheep. 

When one considers all of these things,- — this wonderfully re- 
dundant population of poor and overtaxed, yet happy, bright 
people, supported on 11,000,000 acres, or less than an eighth of 
the* area of their country, — can one wonder that a reflecting man 
is in a sort of daze while here ? 

There are no starvelings in Japan. The children are as fat and 
jolly as curly-tailed pigs ; the young lads and girls give no evi- 
dence of not having enough to eat. They are all rounded in 
form and lithe in action, and the men and boys are capable of 
enduring active labor and fatigue as few others can. They are 
possibly not as muscular as our meat-eating men, but not a day 
passes that I do not see some man whose muscular development 
is a source of admiration, and others whose powers of endurance 
are simply marvellous. Two men on a fair road will pull a heavy 
man 40 miles in eight hours. A gentleman assured me that a 
single pair had drawn him 46. He weighed fully 175 pounds. 
It is true the road was on a rather downward grade. The most 
of these men are born upon and reared on farms. I will touch 
upon one more characteristic of the farmers. I refer to his use 
of flowers. Although he lives in a hovel which is house, barn, 
workshop, and chicken-house all combined, yet one will find close 
by the door of his dirt-floored hut marvels of flowers. Such 
coxcombs, foliage plants, marguerites, asters and chrysanthe- 
mums are never seen in America, except when grown by a pro- 
fessional florist. He has no regular flower-garden, he is too poor 
for that, and grain grows almost up to the threshold of his door. 
But he will have a few plants stuck in odd places, always perfect 
in form, large in size, and of marvellous colorings. 

Here permit me to add a special line as to the chrysanthemum, 
the national flower and forming the crest of the mikado. There 
are many varieties. The largest they keep down to one bloom to the 
stalk. I measured one six and one-quarter inches in diameter, of 
perfect form, and exquisitely pure and white, this, too, though the 
chrysanthemum season had not begun by nearly a month. 
This was the favorite flower of my mother, and has, therefore, 
attracted my attention. Others not as large as our old silver ten- 
cent piece, are grown on rounded bushes of considerable size, 
covering the bush almost solidly. They are now just coming 
into season, and are displayed about the commonest houses. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SPECULATIONS UPON JAPAN— GREAT DYKES AND WALLS— LILIPU- 
TL\N TREES— FEMALE EDUCATION. 

Hiogo, Japan, October 15, 1887. 

Thirty-FIVE years ago last April I met Bayard Taylor in 
Cairo. We were both on our way to Jerusalem, he expecting to 
go on to Moussoul and Ararat ; and I to cross Asia Minor to 
Constantinople. He abandoned his trip and joined me. We 
were nearly of the same age and conceived a liking for each 
other. We spent months together in tent life in the land of the 
Saracen, and crossed by land from Aleppo to Brousa. In a 
caique we were rowed at night toward the Bosphorus, and saw 
the morning's sun gilding the domes and minarets of Stamboul. 
We anticipated some months more of pleasant journeyings to- 
gether in Turkey, Greece, and Albania. But on reaching, in 
July, the sultan's capital, he found letters from the New York 
Tribune, commanding a halt, and ii/~rminghim that Commodore 
Perry was about to be sent on an expedition to Japan, and that 
the paper would endeavor to get him a position on the commo- 
dore's ship. We discussed the future and talked of the strange, 
locked-up country he was about to visit, — a land we regarded al- 
most as belonging to another world, — a people we supposed to 
be of different mold from that in which other men were cast. 
He did join the expedition, and caught a glimpse of the shogun's 
hosts. What he wrote on the subject showed that the sight of 
the land and of its people had not dispelled the illusions we were 
under when in the city of the Turk. Bayard Taylor has gone 
from among men, but his name lives in poetry, and is enrolled 
among the immortals. Here, in the 'land he helped to open to 
the world, I do homage to his memor)% and count it among my 
good fortunes that I knew him and could call him friend. 

A glamour surrounded the word " Japan " when my friend and 
I talked of it far into the night a third of a centur}' ago ; a 
glamour still hangs over it as I sit here in this delicious climate 
and think of its long past and speculate upon its future. Taylor 
and I thought of it as a land of terrors, and of its men as bar- 
barian monsters. The islands were a terra incognita, and the 
American fleet was going to them bearing discoverers ; and with 
true Yankee impudence, our people actually did give names which 

64 



JAPANESE THRIFT. 65 

-yet rule, under the right of discovery, to points of land and islands 
which were peopled and civilized when England was inhabited by 
a lot of ignorant savages, and America had been seen only by 
telescopic observers on some distant planet. We thought of 
America opening a savage land to European and American com- 
merce, so that the universal Yankee could turn a penny and make 
a mighty dollar. 

I sit here, however, and look back over the past. The land 
is covered by a weird haze — a haze through which I see this 
people existing as a people when Nebuchadnezzar was grazing 
among the beasts of the field, and~ when " Mene, tekel, upharsin " 
was blazing in frightful glow upon the Babylonian wall. I see 
this people coming down through the long ages, doing mighty 
works, — works which will endure until the rocking earth alone 
shall sink them into dusty ruin, — works not piled up in pyramidal 
stone to commemorate the legends of forgotten masters, but 
mingled with and made a part of the very soil to enable it to wave 
in corn and blossom into flowers and to bear fruits to feed innumer- 
able peoples, — works to bridle rushing rivers and foaming moun- 
tain torrents, to restrain them, in their wild fury, from carrying 
■ destruction and death, and turning them into handmaids of man, 
helping the dews of heaven to cause the earth to blossom as a 
rose. Huge dykes run up and down great river banks, and back 
and forth across innumerable valleys, confining mighty floods, 
and making them the support and helpers of the people, instead 
of being their destroyer ; their broad summits turned into smooth 
and level roads, and their sloping sides clothed with forest trees. 
Oftentimes for miles on the crests of transverse dykes are cut deep 
channels, along which flow large pellucid streams, fresh from 
mountain heights, irrigating innumerable fields, and sending pure 
water through stony gutters along the single streets of numberless 
villages and hamlets. 

I ride for miles and miles through fields of rice so rich that the 
stalks bend under the heavy grain ; through fields of millet, 
whose heads droop like ostrich feathers ; through fields of cotton, 
white with the bursting bolls; through fields of buckwheat, blos- 
soming like a flower-bed; fields of turnips and other roots, of 
emerald green ; through fields of tarro, whose broad leaves flap 
like elephantine ears ; of sugar-cane, so thick upon the ground 
that one wonders how the roots can possibly find nutriment; 
through plantations of tea, almost black in glossy greenness. I 
see that crop follows crop so quickly that the soil knows no rest, 
and then I remember that this thing has been going on for cen- 
turies, and that to every acre of land under cultivation there are 
three people and over to be supported. That these people not 
only support themselves, but export $48,000,000 worth of produce 
■for the luxury of other lands, and that they do not import a single 
imouthful of food from those lands. Then I remember that all 



66 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the houses in the land are of wood, and are burned down on an 
average of once every ten years. In other words, that there is not 
and cannot be any hoarded wealth ; that the people eat, drink, 
and are merry, with no thought of a remote to-morrow ; that they 
eat of the produce of each day, and lay up nothing for the next. 
And then I remember that this has been their habit and their nature 
for ages. Then, again, I recall the fact that, up to a few years 
ago, these millions had no rights which their daimio masters and 
sumarai retainers were bound to respect. That the nobleman 
fleshed his maiden sword upon the limbs and backs of his slaves 
on the streets and highways as freely as a boy would cut off 
thistle-heads with a cane. With all of this the fact, yet one sees 
a hard-working poor man in his half-clothing, naked up to the 
thigh, carrying his head as erect and well poised upon his shoul- 
ders as ever did a Roman senator ; that the children are fat, 
ruddy, saucy, and jolly as ever were seen in a schoolhouse play- 
ground in America. 

Five years ago an educated woman was a rare thing in the land, 
while to-day every city has its large girl-schools, in which are hun- 
dreds of the rising mothers of the land getting as good an educa- 
tion as an average woman at home obtains. We were in a private 
mission-school a day or two since, in which were 300 well-clothed 
girls and 90 boarders. There we heard one of our own Chicago 
girls, daughter of our learned bibliographer, Mr. Poole, late of the 
public library, hearing a class of young ladies recite — and right 
well, too — exercises in English grammar, and another class recite, 
with decided intelligence, a lesson in physiology to the bright and 
earnest principal, Miss Dauthaday. I recall the fact that this 
wonderful progress is of the growth of five years ; that fathers 
who, up to ten years ago, thought woman was intended to be 
the slave, or, at best, but the agreeable upper servant, of her 
■father, brother, or husband, are now straining every nerve to give 
their daughters a liberal education, and particularly desire them 
to be able to read English literature, while even husbands are 
sending their young wives to school. 

Aiding in all of this is the progressive Empress, who, knowing 
that things cannot be well done by halves, utters the decree 
that women, to be received at court, must wear European cos- 
tumes. And this is not done for vanity's sake, or to encourage 
some pet dressmaker, but to change woman's status absolutely, 
and from the very bottom. Last year, when she and the Mikado 
visited Ozaka, she let it be known that no rank could enter into 
her august presence except in European dress, and, knowing 
how this would entail hardship upon many, with kind generosity 
sent presents of costly stuff to many ladies to enable them to be 
present at her reception. 

By the way, I commend the Empress for her good intentions, 
but I lament that she had not called a congress of wise women 



JAPANESE DRESS. 67 

together to advise and invent some better costume than the 
miserable, unhealthy, and not over-decent style of dress now worn 
by civilized women. Our women are frightfully shocked by the 
exposure permitted by the Japanese costume, but forget that they 
themselves do nearly as bad. They make a well-shaped dress, 
and then stuff in artificial filling when nature has been niggardly 
in her gifts. Conventionalism makes the thing modest and 
decent, and habit and fashion make us think it pretty. But there 
is absolutely nothing in the style of the day which is artistic, 
graceful, healthy, or naturally attractive. I wish I could have 
had the ear of the Empress before she made her fiat. I would 
have begged her to get up a new style, modified upon a Chinese 
model. It is a really pretty, convenient, and sensible dress. This 
costume we saw, in great beauty, on the wife of the Chinese min- 
ister and on ladies of her suite at a temple in Tokio, when they 
came for their regular monthly devotions. Without any apparent 
curiosity, we were able to watch and examine them for nearly a 
half-hour. Their dress was exceedingly becoming, thoroughly 
modest, and very artistic and graceful, and yet of such form that 
it could be adapted to every change of temperature. Our women 
are intelligent, modest, and full of Esthetic refinement, and yet 
they have become so thoroughly slaves to conventional ideas that 
they deform themselves and believe themselves well dressed be- 
cause they are in the fashion, and imagine themselves modestly 
attired because custom has ratified the mode. I would like to 
build a wall around China out of which no almond-eyed Celestial 
could escape, but it would delight me if the costume of their 
ladies could be introduced among Western nations. We would 
then have our better halves dressed to please an artistic eye, Avith- 
out the present waste of female health and strength. Japan 
needs, and is rapidly adopting Western ideas, but when her 
women import annual pattern plates from Paris, and live up to 
the changing fashions of that giddy capital, they will have lost 
much of what they gain by other improvements. 

One cannot realize the enormous strides in progress this peo- 
ple has made since Perry calmly sailed up Yeddo Bay, except by 
reading the intelligent observations of European and American 
writers who were here 20 or 30 years ago, and then by com- 
paring their descriptions of things as they then were with 
what the most careless traveller can now see. The common 
remark made by foreign residents here is that the Japanese are 
moving forward too rapidly. When asked why, they can give no 
intelligent answer. They simply think the thing cannot last. 
The most intelligent lady we have met here made this remark to 
me. I replied by asking my usual question : " Why ? " She 
naively answered : " Five years ago we began thoroughly to in- 
troduce our system of female education among the people. It 
was up-hill work. We were met by every kind of native opposi- 



68 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

tion. Now they have not only been keeping pace with us, step 
by step, but are actually outstripping us, and we cannot keep up 
with them." 

Is it to be wondered at, then, that a close student of human 
nature finds himself constantly asking the question : "What is to 
be the future of this people ? " One fact makes this question the 
more pertinent, and that is that the people themselves do not 
seem to be aware of the rapidity of their own advancement. 
They are so greedy for knowledge, and so apt in its acquirement, 
that they seem to take their progress as a thing of course — a per- 
fectly natural corollary of their determination to make progress. 
They are not simply imitators, as are the Chinese, but they catch 
Western ideas, and these ideas become their own, and not infre- 
quently are improved upon. Their farmers, without the knowl- 
edge of a single scientific fact, are yet the most scientific of agri- 
culturists. Without the knowledge of a single principle to guide 
them, they dig and sow, manure and reap as if replete with all 
the results of past scientific research. They seem to think that, 
in every walk of life, they will imbibe knowledge and skill as a 
sponge drinks up moisture. And I ask myself the question : 
"Will they not?" 

In the kindred branches of agriculture — floriculture and arbori- 
culture — they are as skilled as in the first. One sees beautifully 
developed flowers constantly, up against the mud wall of a smoky 
hovel, in hamlets, and in mountain valleys ; they are frequently 
seen in patches, the size of a bath-towel, stolen from the very 
macadam road ; on ledges of rocks where a hatful of soil will lie, 
dahlias of great variety and perfect in form, coxcombs of exquis- 
ite hues, of huge size, and formed like beautiful pears ; marguer- 
ites as large as a silver dollar, and in great masses upon the bush ; 
a purple iron-weed, a sort of coreopsis nearly as large as the mar- 
■guerite, and equally thickly covering the head ; coleas and other 
foliage plants so brilliant in dyes that they appear to have been 
dipped in blood and then fringed with burning sunbeams ; mari- 
golds and other kindred flowers nearly as large as the dahlias. 
These seem to be the favorites of the peasant or coolie popu- 
lation. 

The skill of these people in tree culture is even more surprising 
than that shown in floriculture. The latter is not so novel to the 
average American. He has seen at home the little wild rose 
worked up into the huge and perfect jacqueminot. He has en- 
joyed the delicious odor of the peony transformed from the rank- 
smelling old-fashioned plant, and is ready to comprehend any 
monstrous metamorphosis among flowers. But when he sees 
here an old pine tree with gnarled and bent branches, its whole 
appearance the exact counterpart of the ancient monarch of the 
mountain-side ; when he sees this old-looking, perfectly healthy 
and thrifty fir, lOO, 200, and even 300, and 400 years old, growing 



LILIPUTIAN TREES. 69 

in a flower-pot two or three feet deep, he hardly knows whether 
he be more interested in the skill evinced or amused by the gro- 
tesqueness of the idea which suggested it. Such a tree as this 
I have seen. Its whole height was not five feet, and its gnarled 
branches did not cover an area of eight feet. I asked its age, and 
was answered, 450 years. Near by were dozens of smaller ones, 
three feet high, in pottery vases, perfect in form, some round and 
bright as the denizens of the rich bottom-land. Others, queer- 
looking, odd old liliputians, making one think he was viewing an 
ancestor of centuries ago hanging from a rocky crag, and that 
he was looking at it through the reversed lenses of a powerful 
field-glass. I ask: 

" How old is that ? " 

" It was planted by my father 52 years ago." 

"And that?" 

" My grandfather put it in the pot 70 years back." 

"And this other here that looks as if it had been watered from 
the fresh-water tank in Noah's ark?" 

"Ah! that is a beauty, and is the pride of my garden. It was 
transplanted when no taller than my little finger by my great- 
great-great-great-grandfather, nearly 200 years ago. He spat upon 
its roots. He is a good god now, and his soul sits among its 
green branches every day and blesses his children." And the 
good man folded his hands and looked as if he felt that the spirit 
of his ancestor, now one of his household gods, heard his pious 
utterances. 

These old little trees are in gardens, and adorn niches for orna- 
ments in the houses of the well-to-do. They are grown on either 
side of the central incense burners before the inner shrines — the 
holy of holies, — where abide the living souls of the gods in the 
great temples, both Shinto and Buddhist. One looks upon them 
very much as you look into the meek eyes of a baby elephant — 
so cute, so quaint, so knowing, and so like its monster mother, 
when it stretches forth its flexible trunk to take a peanut from 
your hand. 

Then, too, there are monster trees, claimed to be a thousand, 
or nearly a thousand years old, whose branches have been trained 
into every conceivable, abnormal shape, and are venerated, if not 
absolutely worshipped. We visited one at Karasaki, on Lake 
Biwa. It is about six feet in diameter just above the spread of 
the roots, but a little higher up, where its three great branches 
spring out, it takes a 39-foot line to girdle it. At some 20 
feet altitude the many limbs coming out of the three great 
branches have been trained nearly horizontally, and cover a space 
of 180 feet from out to out. One branch, up to a few years since, 
lifted to a height of 90 odd feet. A typhoon took it off. The 
broken place is cemented over, and a little god house is perched 
over the cemented fracture. A small temple lies in its shade. 



70 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and the soul of a god lives and sings among its needles. The 
attendant priest told me it was i,ooo years old. I believed him. 
Why should I doubt ? Thomas doubted. I never do, especially 
now that I travel for rest and wish to live in a half-dream. 

These people have had no horses to speak of, no beasts of bur- 
den, no complicated machinery. They themselves have been 
beasts of burden for so many thousands of years that the moon 
was young and had not worn its harvest phase when they became 
people and commenced to earn their food by the sweat of their 
faces. With their naked hands they have chiselled rocks of 
monster size and erected them into mighty walls, 40, 50, 90, 
and 100 feet high, about the castles of the great capitals. 
Some of these walls are miles in length, and are built of stones 
brought from great distances and weighing from 100 and 200 
pounds up to very many tons. In the castle at Ozaka, high up 
on the wall, are granite stones 30 feet long, eight feet high, and 
nearly as many feet deep. These I examined on either side of 
the gate-way. But within were stones so huge that they looked 
like rocky precipices erected by nature upon a mountain-side. I 
could not go in to measure them — I had no permit, and the 
guard, after politely permitting us to look for a minute or two, 
motioned us to pass on. 

But we had time to see two monster stones, which seemed to us 
to be over 40 feet long, 15 to 20 feet high, and how deep we could 
only guess, for they were a part of the great inner wall. These 
mighty walls were not erected, as was Cheops pyramid, by cap- 
tive nations worked to destroy them, but by a cheerful and 
politically enslaved people, but still the people of the land ; peo- 
ple who can chase a piece of bronze with a delicacy of touch and 
a lightness of finish few European people can reach ; can carve a 
bird and have done so for centuries, and did so when these 
massive works were erected ; can and have carved from wood, 
birds so natural that one can almost see them pick the rice they 
appear to be feeding upon, andean see the rufiSing of the feathers 
as they fly. 

" What will be the future of this wonderful people ?" 



CHAPTER X. 

HONOR TO PERRY— THE MIKADO FORMERLY A GOD ; NOW A WISE 

RULER— RAPID PROGRESS— GOOD POLICE— GOOD ROADS— 

A THOUGHT OF MOTHER— FARM HOUSES. 

Kobe, Japan, October i6, 1887. 

America delights in doing honor to the memory of her great 
dead, and her people never weary in recounting their heroic 
deeds. One of her great men, however, has not yet received the 
honors due him, and his noblest act is appreciated only by a few. 
When Commodore Perry conceived the idea of drawing back the 
bolts which for centuries had locked this country against 
foreigners and then calmly and bravely carried out his design, he 
showed the brain of a great statesman, and did one of the boldest 
acts recounted on the page of history. The bristling guns of his 
fleet did much to bring about the wonderful success of the under- 
taking, but not so much as did the calm, dignified, and patient 
bearing of its commander. The reticent diplomacy of the states- 
man did as much as did the bold demeanor of the sailor. Other 
nations have taken greater advantage of the results of the expedi- 
tion than we have done. Let us at least do all honor to the man to 
whom belongs the glory of the idea and of the act. 

At that time Japan had an anointed ruler, who reigned in seclu- 
sion as a god, who was worshipped and venerated as such, and was 
feared because he was the son of the sun, and was supposed to 
have daily intercourse and communion with the great Author of 
all things. She had, however, another ruler, who governed in the 
name of the hidden one and was feared as a master, whose sword 
was never sheathed. For ages the mikado had never been seen 
by his subjects. He gave audiences to the princes, nobles, and 
great priests of the realm, but he spoke from behind a veil — an 
impenetrable screen — and those who pleaded before him did so 
with their foreheads bowed down upon the ground. They would 
not have dared, even if they could, to turn their eyes upon the 
brightness of his dazzling face. To have looked upon such 
effulgence would have been an impiety, punishable by the offend- 
ed gods. 

Through the kindness of our excellent Minister, ex-Governor 
Hubbard of Texas, we had a permit from the Minister of Home 
Affairs to visit the mikado's palace at Kioto. We saw the pavilion 
on which the descendant of the sun-goddess formerly sat when 

71 



72 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

giving audience, and lifted the heavy silk curtains which once- 
screened the mighty one. It was less than 20 years ago that 
the great crowned but unsceptred monarch — the 121st 
ruler of his line — lived in this great palace and reigned 
over, but did not rule, his people. For hundreds of years 
his ancestors had lived and reigned as he did, while the shogun 
(tycoon) governed for him from Yeddo, and ruled the people in 
his name with despotic sway. Perry opened Japan to the gaze 
of the world, and western civilization soon opened the palace of 
the mikado and showed his face to his people. The last of the 
shoguns is now a pensioned civilian. The tyrannical daimios are 
simply influential nobles, and the noble class, the samurai, are 
trying to earn an honest living by filling government posts or 
plying the lusty limb in honest toil, instead of hewing peasants 
down for a pastime, or debauching their wives and daughters for 
recreation. 

The Mikado has moved from his celestial palace in the sacred 
city of Kioto, and now lives in the palace of the tycoon at Yeddo- 
(now Tokio) ; rides in an open carriage before the people ; visits- 
the great cities of his empire ; governs by a species of responsible 
ministry, responsible at least to public opinion, and in two years- 
his 37,000,000 of people are to have representation in the councils 
of the nation. Colleges and universities are crowded with intelli- 
gent seekers after knowledge, and the professors' chairs are filled 
by well-paid, educated men, summoned from all lands. Women 
are being educated fully and completely, concubinage is forbid- 
den, or at least is no longer protected by law. Railroads are being 
built all over the land. Great ships and huge steamers of all na- 
tions ply in her waters and lie in her harbors by the dozens, and 
the people recognize the fact that they owe all this to America. 
All hail to the memory of brave Perry ! Paradoxical as it may 
sound, it was well for this people that they were governed by 
despotic sway when the country was opened. The force of des- 
potism alone could have broken down the prejudices engendered 
by centuries of seclusion and bigotry. For ages the people had 
possessed no will of their own. They were told to march for- 
ward, and with implicit obedience they started on their march, 
and are still marching to a quickstep, which dazzles not only the 
outward world but the old rulers, who are, and will be, compelled 
to keep in line to the quickened time. 

To all outward appearances the country is well governed. It 
is certainly the safest country to travel in I have ever known. 
We have wandered in highways and byways ; we have been in 
crowded cities where the people swarmed as bees swarm about 
hives ; in dark mountain gorges and on lonely mountain sides ; 
being foreigners and travellers, we were known to carry valuables 
and to possess funds ; we have walked and ridden through dark 
streets and lonely roads by night ; we have slept in hotels in 



JAPANESE CITIES. 73 

small villages and in large towns, with no locks upon our doors 
and no walls about us thicker than a panel of strong tissue paper ; 
we leave our rooms with open valises, and valuables on open 
shelves. We have lived thus for five weeks, travelling over 500 
miles, and have lost nothing, except through our own for- 
getfulness. 

We have seen hundreds of thousands of people, and have not 
seen a really drunken man, nor a single quarrelsome or boisterous 
one. We have seen hundreds of well dressed, quiet policemen : we 
have never seen one gossiping with the people, or two talking to- 
gether. We have seen crowds collected by curiosity or other 
cause, and have seen them at once and good-naturedly disperse 
on a low order from a patrolman. We have never seen a street 
blockade for a minute, although we have often seen them thickly 
crowded. We have driven through towns when holiday proces- 
sions were moving through the streets, but have never been com- 
pelled to stop, a way being always opened for our passage. 

The rulers may be tyrants, and the people over-taxed, but the 
tyrants evidently rule wisely, and the people pay the taxes with- 
out a murmur. In England the lower classes — the hardworkers 
— look sullen and ill-tempered. In France they wear an air of gay 
recklessness. In Austria the peasants always make me sad, so 
tired and hard-worked do they look. Here there is an appearance 
of absolutely bright cheerfulness on all faces, even when the arms 
and legs are doing the work which beasts alone should perform. 
Why is it ? Is it because they are but merry, speaking animals, 
and do not know that they suffer? If so, it proves that it were 
folly to be wise. 

In March, 1886, Tokio's population was, in round numbers, 
1,300,000. It had 3,748 policemen, divided as follows : One chief, 
26 captains, 26 lieutenants, 341 sergeants, 3,441 patrolmen, 8 
mounted men, and 141 detectives. During the year 1885 the 
whole number of arrests were 6,414; during January and Feb- 
ruary, 1886, 808. We have been in five cities with populations of 
over 150,000 each; in eight with populations from 5,000 to 
50,000 ; in at least 50 villages and towns with from 500 to 2,000. 
Policemen are all over the country in every village, all wearing a 
common uniform. We have not seen a single one with a prisoner 
or in any altercation with a citizen. 

The streets and public roads are beautifully paved, nearly all 
with gravel, shell, or fine macadam, and all well crowned, thor- 
oughly rolled, and kept in constant repair. A stone roller about 
four feet in diameter, drawn by a dozen or more men, is used to 
pack the gravel down. The streets in towns are as clean as if 
swept. It must be borne in mind, however, that there are com- 
paratively no horses to make a street or road filthy, except in 
Tokio, and no heavy wagons to cut into a road-bed. The light, 
loaded vehicles simply keep them well packed. In Tokio the 



74 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

cavalry soldiers and gentlemen's carriages employ quite a num- 
ber of horses, but all droppings are at once swept up. 

There are four great national highways leading from Tokio and 
running in different directions to the extreme limits of the land. 
These are well graded and are kept in thorough repair by the 
central government. Branch roads lead from these great high- 
ways in every direction. Many of them may, too, be maintained 
by the government. This I had not the means of fully learning. 
The most of them, hov/ever, I did learn, are built and supported 
by the several prefectures or by the villages traversed. There 
being such an abundance of rivers and streams, there results 
naturally a necessity for a vast number of bridges. Many of them 
would seem at first blush unnecessary, but this idea is removed 
by the reflection that in the spring and rainy season floods are 
greater here than elsewhere, and the people would be cut off from 
locomotion by streams which, though small rivulets to-day, at 
times become fierce torrents. 

Many bridges on the public highways have been built over the 
large rivers by contiguous villages. These are toll bridges. The 
tolls for a jinrickisha ranges from one to two and a half cents. 
We did not see a toll-gate or bridge presided over by a single toll- 
taker. All seemed to have three reverend fellows, who were 
squatted within the toll-house with the inevitable charcoal brazier 
for lighting a pipe and another for making tea. Are they thus 
placed in threes to watch each other? I wished to halt and 
advise them not to have 15. Chicago experience has proven that 
to be a fatal number. Majorities of 8 and 19 are not healthy 
for the people. 

The width of the great roads depends much on the lay of the 
land. I found the average to be, in road-bed, from 12 to i3-|-feet. 
Outside of this is a ditch on either side, sometimes rock lined, but 
•generally in the simple soil. Along these ditches, in all moun- 
tainous or hilly, and therefore well watered, localities, run streams 
oftentimes full and clear enough to be fine trout brooks. They 
are either feeders to or drains from the irrigating ditches and 
canals which supply the fields with their indispensable fluid. 
These roadside brooks are frequently deliciously laughing and 
babbling. The branch roads and small byways are very narrow, 
in mountains, barely wide enough for the jinrickisha, or for a 
pack-pony, with turnout places here and there, for the conven- 
ience of those which may meet. By the way, the little man- 
carriages are 34 inches from tread to tread, when made for single 
persons ; 48 inches when intended for two passengers. 

Outside of the ditches on the great roads are rows of trees, 
often doubled. These leave the width of the whole road from 20 
to 25 feet. Many of the trees are of great age and size. Between 
Utsonomieya and Nikko, on either side of the road, are old 
cryptomerias, a species of cedar, none of them under two and a 



SAD REFLECTIONS. 75 

half feet in diameter, running up in many to five, and extending 
to a height of not far from 200 feet. They are planted so close 
together that frequently the trunks near the ground are incorpo- 
rated one with another as a great solid wall. The old road has 
been worn down through ages until it is four to six feet below the 
original level. The roots of the great trees seeking the moist soil 
near the ditches, after the manner of cedars, have become so 
interlaced, and have grown to such a size, that they form an abso- 
lute wall of woody roots from four to eight or ten feet high, for, 
like other cedars, the flanges of the roots lift considerably above 
the soil. The branches of these lofty trees unite overhead and 
form a perfect Gothic arch. Looking through one of these great 
woody arches, the effect is very weird and picturesque. The 
trunks of the trees, running one into the other in the perspective 
view, resemble a mighty basaltic wall. High above springs the 
green arch, through which the sunlight at noonday barely pene- 
trates, and toward late evening makes one feel he is moving 
between rows of spectral monsters. Rows of trees are on all the 
great roads, not always of cryptomerias, being sometimes yellow 
pine and other species. When of yellow pine the effect is very 
grotesque. The trees throw out no branches until at a consider- 
able height, and then these are so gnarled, bent, and yellow, as 
they lean towards each other over the road, that the effect is more 
artistic than with the other arrow-like, straight monarchs of the 
forest. 

In some of the mountain passes the public roads are for miles 
paved with basaltic stones laid flat. These have become polished 
by the wear of centuries. Over them the traveller has to walk, 
and hard and ugly work it is. One slips and flounders as he goes 
uphill until his knees and thighs ache to the bone. One slips 
and flounders as he goes down hill until the calves of the legs feel 
like monster boils ; at least mine did. When I sit on a nice seat 
and look at a beautiful scene, I am but thirty-two and the rise, 
and " all my skies are rosy bright, laughing in triumph at yester- 
night." I am young and full of to-morrow, and live in the present 
and glory in the future. But when I climb a mountain I am full 
sixty-two years old, and I feel there is no morrow until the 
to-morrow of eternal rest shall come. This is a beautiful world, 
and made beautiful for man, or it is a beautiful world and man, 
springing from its soil, is so fashioned that he revels in the beau- 
ties showered upon the lap of his mother earth. Man's sins and 
wrong-doings scar and mar the picturesque earth, and if he com- 
mits no sin, the decrepitude of age dims the eye and numbs the 
senses until all is sere and in the yellow leaf. 

We are now in the latter half of the middle fall month. It is, 
to all intents, glorious summer. I look out of my window. 
Light, fleecy clouds chase each other athwart the clear blue sky. 
I lay down my pencil and am lost in revery. How blue would 



76 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

be yonder sky ! How light the floating clouds, if she who was 
my sunshine were but by my side to enjoy and drink in the beauty 
about me ! How far off in yonder blue is her pure spirit float- 
ing ? Or is it hovering near me now ? Does it join me, an^ is it 
journeying with me as I make my "race with the sun?" I envy the 
Japanese their absolute faith in the living presence of their dead 
ancestors. But their fathers and forefathers alone live about 
them. No thought of the dead mother. One look of love, one 
sweet whisper — " My darling child ! " — from her who bore me, 
who nursed me upon her lap, and bade the fever go when she laid 
her cool hand upon my baby brow — these would be worth to me 
more than a thousand blessings from all the fathers through whose 
loins I came, from Adam down. One look of undying devotion 
from the dark eyes, which were deeper than fathomless wells>; 
one touch of the soft hand, which a few months ago could cause 
every drop of blood to dance and sing through my veins ; one 
earnest " I love you " from those lips which a year ago made my 
life a song of living joy — Ah ! Fathers may be revered and hon- 
ored, but dead mothers and wives are for worship, as living 
mothers and wives are for devotion. 

I said all the great roads were lined by rows of fine trees. 
These rows are broken by many villages lying along the high- 
ways. One is rarely out of sight, three or four miles being a long 
interval. These villages are the homes of the farmers. They 
dwell along the road, it being to them the one street. The 
farmer's house is rather a hut, and would deserve the name of 
hovel were it not for the cleanliness oi the living part of it. In 
mere farm villages they stand back a little from the road, the 
space in front being generally planted as a field, even where such 
space is not over 20 feet. 

I will describe a house which may be taken as typical, for these 
-people are thoroughly homogeneous, and, though their dialects in 
different localities differ one from the other, yet the houses, dress, 
manners, and customs are everywhere the same. Imagine a house 
of 30 feet front and about the same depth, now and then considera- 
bly deeper. It consists of a sill on a loose stone foundation. 
Upright studs are set at the corners and every three feet between. 
To these studs are lashed, with coarse grass thongs, bamboo lath. 
On both sides of this is a smooth coat of plaster, composed of 
mud and straw. The story is, say, nine feet high. Above this 
springs a steep, hipped roof of thatch. The roof is, rather, half- 
hipped, for a ridge runs, say, ten feet along the centre. The 
thatch is a foot to 20 inches thick, very compact and tight. The 
ridge rises a foot above the comb, and is planted with flag or 
grass, and is always green. This is to keep the wind from tearing 
it off. Sometimes the whole roof is green with the little succu- 
lent plant vulgarly, called " hens and chickens." The eaves of 
the roof overhang two, three, and sometimes four feet. The main 



JAPANESE ENDURANCE. 77 

story has no ceilings, but above what should be the ceiling there 
is a partial one. This, and under the hanging eaves of the house, 
is the farmer's barn, where he stores his utensils and all of his crop 
which is not immediately sold. Barns as such are not needed. 
The Japanese live from hand to mouth. Crops are sold as soon 
as harvested. Only enough is stored for home consumption and 
for seed. The front of the house is open by day, but closed by 
night. About ten feet of one side of the main floor is of dirt. 
Here all rough under-cover work is done, and wood, straw, and 
materials for manufacture are kept. Raised above this is a plat- 
form two and a half feet high, covering the remainder of the 
main floor or house. On this is a sunken' hearth, four feet square, 
where is built the only fire the house ever has. Over it hangs a 
chain from the roof ; it is the pot-rack. To it hang one or two 
pots, the bulk of the cooking utensils. At night the front of the 
house is closed in by sliding wooden shutters, and within, the 
raised platform is subdivided at bedtime into as many compart- 
ments as the tamily needs or can afford. The floor is more or 
less polished, and is covered by mats. There is no chimney ; the 
smoke goes out at the opening in the ridge or quite as often 
escapes by the door or rear windows, which frequently are so 
black as to look untidy. When one reflects that there is never a 
fire which would fill a half-bushel measure, that the Japanese wear 
no woollen garments, and only sandals or clogs on their feet, that 
the winters are cold enough to make ice two or three inches 
thick, and that the ground is often white with snow, one wonders 
how they live. There seems to be something peculiar in their 
physical make-up, as well as in their plants, which enables them 
to endure safely great cold. I am told that plants which, in 
America are killed by autumn frosts, here live and bloom in the 
midst of snow, and when the thermometer has gone much below 
the freezing-point. Certainly the people have wonderful powers 
of endurance, if their sensations are such as ours. 

Every Japanese, high or low, takes his hot bath every night. 
He jumps into a vat of water heated from 115 to 120 degrees, 
and enjoys the boil, and yet when necessary stands for hours up 
to his waist in cold mountain torrents, and it is said will break 
the ice in winter and work up to his neck in immersion, seeming 
to feel no ill effect from it. He is certainly a wonderful animal, 
and ethnological data must yet be furnished to convince me that 
he be not indigenous to the soil he lives on. 



CHAPTER XI. 

TEMPLES AND GODS— TOKIO ; ITS CASTLE AND DENSE POPULATION 

—EASY-GOING TRADESMEN— BEAUTY OF THE YOUNG AND 

UGLINESS OF OLD WOMEN— PROSTITUTION— FISH. 

Kobe, Japan, October 17, 1887. 

Japan has five great cities : Tokio, with its population of over 
1,250,000; Kioto and Ozaka, each with a population of over 
250,000; Nagoya, with some 200,000; and Yokohama, with 150,- 
000. Tokio, Kioto, and Ozaka are the most interesting of these. 
They are great hives of people, and bewilder one who rides or 
walks through them. Each has its castle or central palace, each 
has great temples, and densely populated, narrow streets. I will 
not attempt accurately to describe the temples. It could not be 
done, except at the expense of great prolixity, without the aid 
of pictures and drawings. They are all of wood, with huge, 
bending, massively thick roofs, and large pillars ; and are either 
elaborately and beautifully lacquered in various tints, vermilion 
predominating, or, being unpainted entirely, have their natural 
woods mellowed by time. The great majority of the temples are 
mausoleums of some great man who has become a demi-god and 
is worshipped. 

There are two religions in the land — Shintoism, the old nation- 
al religion, and Buddhism. The foundation of Shintoism was a 
-worship of the sun, or the sun-goddess, the original creator of all 
things. Following her are thousands of gods, monsters of the 
imagination, the denizens of mighty forests and lofty mountains, 
or horrible caverns and caves, and of belching volcanoes. The 
majority of them were probably men in far distant ages, who 
awakened men's fears by their deeds of bloodshed and rapine, or 
awakened their affections by charity and acts of love. Their hu- 
man character has been forgotten in the long lapse of ages, and 
they are now regarded as never having been other than super- 
natural. The great bulk of the gods, however, are recognized as 
men who, after death, were deified. The ancestors of every man 
are to him household gods, and he chooses the one he will wor- 
ship as such. 

The shogun or tycoon rulers of the past are all worshipped as 
gods. When a ruler died his successor erected to him a great 
mausoleum and buried his body in a tomb at its rear. The mauso- 
leum at once became a temple, and the soul of the dead man 

78 



TOKIO. 79 

lives in the inner shrine and is worshipped by the masses. Some 
of these temples are of great beauty in their architecture, and 
their adornments are wonderfully elaborate and rich. The two 
richest temples in the empire are at Nikko, the mausoleums of 
lyeyasu and lyemitsu, the founders of the late family of shoguns, 
200 and odd years ago. They are models of temple beauty. 
Here it is that one sees the wonderful lacquer work for which 
Japan is so famous. As beautiful as it is, however, I was more 
delighted with the wood carvings which surpassed any thing I had 
ever seen. The flowers and vines cut from wood seem to be 
growing and the birds to be breathing and flying. I counted in a 
frieze in a sort of wall or fence around one of the temples 227 
birds of life-size, in alto-relievo so wonderfully wrought and ex- 
quisitely painted, that I almost imagined I could see them pant 
and flutter. 

The roofs of the temples are many feet thick, and made up 
of richest cornice-work, the several members all painted in 
charming neutral tints. But I dare not attempt to describe 
them, for without the technical terms I could not possibly enable 
one to see them with me. The Japanese have a saying : " See 
' Nikko ' before you say ' kekko ' " — " See Nikko before you utter 
the word ' Splendid.' " I will say, see Nikko before you attempt 
to read of its splendors. The temples of Tokio are very beauti- 
ful, and are also the burying-place of shoguns. All of the suc- 
cessors of lyemitsu were buried here, except the last, who was 
expelled in 1868, and is still alive but will probably never be 
deified. 

It is said that Tokio covers nearly if not quite as much terri- 
tory as does London, It is certainly of vast dimensions. The 
central portion — the castle, as it is called — covers a space several 
miles in circumference. This comprises the first, second, and 
third castles, the one surrounding the other, and between each a 
great moat 100 to 150 feet wide. Each inner castle and moat is 
on a higher level than the next outer one. The inner side of 
each moat is bordered by a great wall from 60 to 90 feet high, 
built of huge stone and of massive strength. Each of these inner 
castles, or divisions of the castle, is on a level with the top of the 
next outer wall. Such walls and moats are zigzag or serpentine 
in line. These so-called castles are not such according to our 
ideas. They are simply enclosed spaces, and could be success- 
ively defended in case of an attack. The outer one being taken, 
the next became a strong fortification. The inner castle of all, 
which covers several hundred acres, was the home of the shoguns. 
The mikado is now erecting a magnificent palace in place of the 
old one, which was burned down, as every thing is sooner or later 
in Japan. This inner castle is a garden or park covered with 
magnificent trees, and is beautifully laid out so as to represent a 
thoroughly rural locality, with lakes, streams, meadows, woods, 



3o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and thickets. We had a permit to go through the grounds and 
found them very picturesque, with running streams, rocky water- 
falls, thickets of bamboo of great height, dense jungles, and 
beautiful gardens. The two outer castles are occupied by gov- 
ernment buildings and some of the city residences of the nobles. 
This portion of the city, however, has but a thin population. 
Outside the outer moat is the main city, stretching for miles 
from this imperial centre. The houses are of one and two stories 
in height, except the public buildings. These latter are all 
European in form and architecture. 

Formerly the daimios were compelled to spend a part of each 
year at the shogun's capital, and large spaces of ground were 
allotted them in the outer castle, on which they erected great 
quadrangular buildings resembling barracks, each covering many 
acres, for themselves and their numerous retainers. In this way 
the shogun forced them to expend a large part of their vast 
revenues, wrung from the poor serfs, to adorn his capital, and was 
at the same time enabled to keep his eye upon them and to pre- 
vent them from becoming too powerful in their great baronies. 
It is said that many of these daimios had revenues running into 
many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and had at their command 
men enough to form large armies. During the past two and a 
half centuries, while the foreigner was absolutely locked out of 
Japan, the nation was one of spies. No man dared speak, for the 
very walls had ears, and no man of rank knew when he might receive 
a secret command to commit hari-kari. This espionage went into 
the very nature of men of all ranks, and was the source of the 
worst of this people's rather national characteristics — suspicious- 
ness. Even in the little time we have been here, I have seen this 
disposition cropping out among all with whom we have had deal- 
ings. They are ready to be suspicious of every one with whom 
-they come in contact. Time may undo this blot, but it will take 
a long time of fair dealing. If the present march of improvement 
and its consequent large expenditure of money should end in a 
collapse, I much fear that the suspiciousness of the people may 
cause them to lay it to the foreign ideas which are so cultivated, 
and cause them to take a reactionary step which will require years 
to undo. 

While I write I hear a bagpiper's dulcet tones upon the street 
and the loud voice of some jolly Scot in wild hurrah. I look at 
my watch and find the night has reached the " wee sma' hours 
ayont the twal." To bed I go, but not immediately to sleep. 
The hurrah is kept up ; the bagpipes screech and wheeze in 
wildest slogan. Dozens of voices yell out, " Fall in — march ! " 
and there are none to fall in but those who give the orders. Each 
fellow sees just fourscore kilted Highlandmen in line, for he has 
put a glass before his eyes this night. 

I find on getting up this morning that there was a regatta yes- 



POLITICAL REFORMATION. 8r 

terday, and a club feast. The whole " concession " seemed to be 
jolly, if one judged by the hurrah I heard last night ; and all were 
apparently Scotch. It is wonderful how quickly the bagpipe and 
the juice of Scotch rye will manufacture true sons of Scotia, or 
will multiply a few into an uproarious host, ready 

" Wi' tippeny, to fear nae evil, 
Wi' usquebae to face the devil." 

But I was speaking of the daimio residences in Tokio. All of 
these have been turned into manufacturing establishments, or 
have been torn down. The daimios claim great credit for the 
part they played when the shogunate was abolished and their own 
vast feudal rights and possessions were abandoned. The claim 
may be somewhat just, but it is rather too much to believe that 
the doings of '68 and '69 were noble acts of self-abnegation. It is 
easier to think that they had the wit to comprehend the inevita- 
ble, and the courage to face the music. How much more com- 
mendable and manly than the miserable egotism and grimace the 
French Noblesse paraded before the world during the first half 
of the century just ending. The samurai made, I believe, no 
pretense of patriotic self-immolation. They had been lording it 
over the land, and were so used to the carrying of arms at all 
times that they did not quit with grace, but resisted a routrance 
and only surrendered when the inevitable was upon them with 
crushing weight. It may have been imagination, but I have a 
great many times, in the streets and roads, met men whose heads 
seemed more proudly lifted upon their shoulders than was natural, 
and whose curled lips and haughty, fierce eyes seemed to tell me 
how the owner hated the foreigner and detested his ways. 

I was about, however, to tell you of the great city of Tokio, 
outside of the outer moat. The streets, as are nearly all streets 
in the land, are very narrow, the majority being of the width of 
our narrow alleys. There are no sidewalks. The ground-floor — 
the genuine rez de cJiaiiss^e of the houses — runs into the street 
pavement. Each little house is shop, workshop, and residence of 
the occupant. If there be a second story, it is not over eight feet 
high. One at once asks, how do all these people live in these 
little coops? He goes to the rear of these small buildings, and 
finds there are no back yards and gardens such as we are accus- 
tomed to. The whole square or block is filled with houses, one 
behind another, packed together as honeycombs are packed in 
beehives, and the people move in and out among each other and 
over each other as bees do in reaching their cells. The streets, 
narrow and crooked lanes, running in all directions, twisting, turn- 
ing, zigzagging, and winding, are crowded with people, all engaged, 
all busy, but apparently busy in doing little things. All, while 
.busy, do what they have to do with an air of nonchalant uncon- 



82 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

cern, which is odd and strange to an American, accustomed to see 
men work as if to-morrow they had to die, and do they must and 
must do to-day. Is ours the better mode ? J' en doute. 

The inevitable charcoal brazier and teapot is close beside every 
dealer and every worker. The dealer takes two or three whiffs at 
his little half-thimble-sized pipe, inhales the smoke, blows it from 
his nose in a white cloud, and closes his bargain. The carpenter 
draws his plane or drives his chisel, then takes two or three whiffs 
from his pipe, knocks out the ashes, and goes on with his work, or 
stops to finish the game of checkers with his fellow-workmen, or 
perhaps with his employer. Every one works as if there was no 
limit to his time and no necessity for hurry, and yet the work is 
done, for they labor from the very dawn far into night. It is no 
uncommon thing to hear the hammer or heavy rice-beater pound- 
ing long after the outer shutters are put up, and the house looks 
as if there was no living thing within, or that all were wrapped in 
night. Houses in which are forges cannot be so closed up at night, 
so that one sees the glow of the fire and sees Vulcans hammering by 
the light of their little furnaces as late as ten and eleven o'clock. 
But all is done easily and leisurely. As a gentleman of colored 
persuasion, formerly of Philadelphia, whom I met on a holiday 
excursion, with his Japanese wife and semi-pickaninnies, told me, 
" They never strain tharselves, sah ! " 

The streets are crooked and twisted. When one takes a 
" kumura " or jinrickisha for a run to a distant part of the town, 
more or less beyond the castle centre, he is amazed at the tortu- 
ous doubling his man makes to reach it, and wonders how he can 
find his way ; the streets have such innumerable windings, and all 
look as much alike as the faces in a flock of sheep. But the man 
will pull you at a dashing pace by day, or even by night when all 
is dark, with only a paper lantern here and there, no names on 
street corners, and each street resembling another as a row of 
corn resembles its neighbor. He seems to find his way by 
instinct, and is never at a loss. 

The Japanese are thoroughly homogeneous. While there may 
be said to be different types among them, they all have certain 
characteristics in common, and as far as I have seen, some never 
failing ones. The eyes are not almond-shaped, like the Chinese, 
but generally set slanting inward. The upper lid, however, never 
fails to be somewhat drawn at the inner curve, as if the skin of 
this lid was somewhat thick and inflexible and too short. This 
seems to be absolutely universal. All have enormous heads of 
crow-black straight hair, except now and then one sees a brownish 
tint among children under eight or ten, as if sun-burnt. This, 
however, cannot be the cause, for few grown people wear any 
head-covering, except working in the sun when high. Then they 
put on, among the cooly class, straw hats. These are of sev- 
eral varieties, but generally resemble a large inverted water-bowl 



BEAUTY OF JAPANESE YOUTH. 83 

in form. The rich or better-to-do, are bare-headed everywhere, 
and carry umbrellas when the sun is hot. In rainy weather the 
working-classes wear a sort of rain-hat about two feet in diam- 
eter, shaped like a straight-ribbed parasol. This is set on top of 
the head and held by a straw thong tied under the chin. In 
addition to this, they wear a rain-coat, or mantle, made of coarse 
grass. Some of these resemble a simple mat thrown over the 
shoulders. The real national rain-coat, however, is a mass of dry 
grass, woven together, about the neck and hanging in grassy 
fringe nearly to the knees. This costume is decidedly pictu- 
resque, especially when the water is dripping from the fringe. 
The heads of the grass hang towards the bottom. It takes a 
heavy rain to wet the wearer. 

In and through the city (as such) of Tokio runs a considerable 
river and many canals. They carry commerce of a heavy character 
to distant parts, which would be excessively laborious to a people 
who have no horses. But I have wandered from the subject I 
was talking of — the physiological characteristics of the Japanese. 
I think I have discovered another peculiarity. When waited 
upon by the girls in the hotels I was struck by the delicacy and 
beauty of their hands. Their finger-nails would be the admira- 
tion of a manicure. I also thought I saw a peculiar shortness of 
the little finger, as compared to the third. I have thought this 
peculiarity common to all. I have watched, but not having lan- 
guage to excuse a desired scrutiny, and being modest in the 
extreme, I have only seen from casual observation. There is very 
great difference in the complexion of the people. One sees many 
girls and boys as fair as the Caucasian — beautiful, clear, white 
complexions, with more of the cream under-tint than the starchy 
white of the English blonde. The masses, however, are dark. 
The young have a higher average of good looks than any other 
people I know, particularly those from ten to twenty years. The 
very young children are not so nice to -look at. A cold in the 
head seems universal among them, and the nose seems never to 
know a handkerchief. They appear to enjoy the dripping, as 
a bull-dog delights to have ropes of slaver hanging from his 
under-jaw. But one sees a great many handsome boys and 
pretty girls, from ten years up, many of them of rare beauty. I 
believe I have seen far more beautiful young women in the past 
six weeks than I ever did before in as many years. I do not mean 
the high, refined beauty of one of our really beautiful women, 
but lithe and rounded forms, undulating motions, which the awk- 
ward clog-gait cannot wholly overcome; well turned and finely 
chiselled features; rosy, budding mouths; dark, soft, and expres- 
sive eyes ; massy crowns of black hair, always perfectly coiffured; 
and with-all a thoroughly womanly, modest expression of face, 
and beautiful complexions, running up from the nut-brown to 
the pure, creamy white. Such as these, are to be seen every- 



84 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

where as one runs through the land. The fair complexion does 
not seem to belong to the upper classes, as I had been led to 
suppose. One sees a perfect complexion on a waiter-girl in a 
hotel, and I have seen many such on young women picking cotton 
near the roadway ; while among ofificials at Tokio, and indeed, 
everywhere, we find very swarthy people. Count Itto, the real head 
of the nation at this time, and the commanding general who 
entertained us at the old castle at Nagoya, are both of dark, 
copper-colored, chestnut hue, and the Countess Itto looked to 
me, in a hurried passing, as dark as one of our octoroons, but 
without the yellow tinge. This dark tint among ofiticials is 
owing to the fact that they belong to the bold soldier caste, and 
came originally from Kinshiu and Shikokou, the great islands be- 
yond the inland sea. There the people are dark, and more brave 
and hardy than those of Hondo and Niphon, the main island. 

While the young girls and young women are pretty, I can say but 
little in praise of the old ones. When married they color the teeth 
to a glossy black, shave the eyebrows, and pluck the lashes. This 
is said to be done to prove that henceforth they do not desire 
the admiration of any but their husbands. Poor fools, they do 
not know that some of the brightest men of the century have 
gravely asked the question if the tinkling of the marriage-bell 
does not toll the funeral knell of love, even in lands where 
marriage is really the commencement of female adornment. But 
aside from this custom, the women here do not wear their good 
looks long. They toil, bear babies, and rapidly grow old. One 
superadding cause of this I suspect to be the habit of nursing 
their children at their breast until four and five years of age. 
We have frequently seen children playing and romping with 
their mates in the streets, then suddenly stop, rush to their 
mothers, and draw from the breasts their own lunches and the 
very life of the poor women. They never wean a child until 
another comes to take its place, and it is no unusual thing for 
the two to divide the produce of the dairy, if it be a plentiful 
one. It is said this custom is so prevalent because there are no 
cows which give milk to speak of, and no food other than moth- 
er's milk to bring the youngster through the teething season. In 
spite of this, however, the mortality, as shown by statistics, among 
children is simply frightful. This is hard to understand, for the 
children are in great numbers everywhere. They are tumbling 
and playing in the streets ; they make the welkin ring in the ham- 
lets and villages, and when we have been on the road as early as 
seven in the morning, we would meet or pass them by the hun- 
dreds on the country highways, on their way to school, all with 
little baskets for their books and luncheon, and with their droll 
counting-tables strapped to their backs. Education is compul- 
sory, with certain exceptions I have not been enabled to learn. 

Will the extension of education put a stop to one of the 



JAPANESE IMMORALITY. 85 

strangest of all this country's institutions — its public prostitu- 
tion ? Large sections of every city are set aside for this purpose. 
In Tokio it is a suburb, but in many places the establishments 
are in the most frequented localities and close to the temples. 
Every house in such localities is devoted to the demi-monde. 
Some of them are of palatial splendor — two, three, and now and 
then four stories in height. At night these are a blaze of light. 
The first story has in front a light wicker screen, not unlike the 
bars of a cage in a menagerie, only being of wood. Behind 
these sit the girls, dressed in their finest toggery, eating confec- 
tions, drinking tea, and looking their best. In some of these 
show-rooms one will see, according to the size of the house, 
all the way from a dozen to 30 or 40. They are so 
whitened by cosmetics that their faces assume an unnatural 
and almost ghastly look. They are all mortgaged to the keeper 
by their parents, or by themselves, for a longer or shorter period. 
Music abounds in these streets. One sees in Tokio several thou- 
sand of these girls, all sitting with perfect decorum, nothing be- 
ing done that is unseemly in outward appearance. The streets 
are crowded with men of all ages ; and frequently there will be 
seen a father, with his wife and children, walking up and down 
and looking at the show. Among these children, with their 
parents, are females. Now and then a girl is called to the 
bars and talks with a friend, a lover, or a passing admirer. One 
by one the girls drop out to entertain a friend or lover. And in 
such places men often find wives, and not a few of them are now 
in good society in the nation's capital. With these exhibitions 
it is not to be wondered at that the good wife of a missionary 
said that the Japanese were the most immoral people on earth. 
I had to confess that the immorality was more patent than any- 
where else. But, after all, does the ostrich destroy its enemy 
when it sticks its own head beneath the sand ? Let wise men 
look the evil straight in the face and do their earnest best to 
undo it as far as is compatible with humanity; but do not .let 
the love of morality- — true soul morality — degenerate into sickly 
sentimentality, or into pharisaical outward form. It is a sad 
thing to see this horrible depravity here, stalking openly in the 
blaze of light, but sadder far to think that in Christian America 
and Europe the same exists, only under cover, and that thou- 
sands sink into wretched graves from the unholy life, and that 
countless thousands of our good people pay no attention to the 
leprosy, except to demand that it be kept out of sight, and that 
their nerves be not shocked by its open view. The Japanese 
seem never to have wakened to the thought that this sin is one 
of the most hideous of all ; or, indeed, that it is a sin at all ; 
otherwise parents surely would not take their young children, 
both boys and girls, to look upon it. 

They do not take them to be shocked by its deformity, for no 



86 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

deformity is seen — all is decorous, and, to the eye, pretty. No 
ribald jest is heard or permitted, either within the bars, by the 
girls, or without, by the crowds who look upon them. Police 
are ever on the watch. There is no look of shame or sadness on 
the faces of the poor creatures thus put up for sale. They are 
beautifully dressed and seem amused at the interest they awaken, 
and their eyes dance when an admirer beckons them to the rail 
for a chat. It is known that when they go out of their bondage 
its scars are not left upon limb or forehead. There is nothing 
to say to the young : " Look, tremble, and beware ! " It is a 
strange phase of the strange civilization of this strange people. 

There is a great inland commerce constantly going on among 
these people. Nothing is so small as to have no value. One 
sees bushels of fish no larger than a baby's little finger on the 
stalls, and sea-cockles smaller than our little snails, while near by 
will be wiggling eels three feet long, the peeled head and arms 
of great devil fish, and the fins and steaks of monster sharks. 
With all the anomalous productiveness of the soil, producing for 
centuries, year after year, great double crops ; yet the land is not 
more bountiful than is the water. It is said there are several 
millions of people actually engaged in taking fish from the sea, 
and this has been going on from time immemorial, and still the 
sea never tires of its generosity. Fishes spawned in icy regions 
are caught in the same waters here with those which ordinarily 
are found only within the tropics, all in boundless quantities, 
and many of them of finest flavor. The supply does not seem 
diminished by the catch. This is true of lake fish as well as of 
those of the sea. 

Gov. Hubbard did us the honor to give us an elegant lunch. 
The " tai " upon his table was superior to any red snapper I 
have eaten, and good fries are to be had in every hotel. The 
inland waters, too, are almost as prolific as the sea. Every 
stream and lake has its fish. There are on Lake Biwa quite 
good-sized towns, the bulk of whose people are fishermen upon 
its waters. The salmon trout, and two or three kinds of speckled 
trout are in the cold lakes and mountain streams in abundance. 
The people all fish, from little fellows of six and eight years up. 
One sees little toddlers catching crabs as large as the crown of a 
hat in small irrigating streams, and others on the salt bays fishing 
with a line and hook for shrimps and tiny minnows. Parents 
never seem to think it possible their children should drown. 
Little troops are seen along rushing torrents and climbing on the 
rocky walls of deep canals with such apparent recklessness that a 
stranger trembles for their safety. They seem to have an in- 
stinct of self-protection, as little animals have. 



CHAPTER XII. 

BEAUTY OF JAPANESE SCENERY— TERRACED FARMS— THE INLAND 

SEA AND NAGASAKI— MISSIONARIES— CHEERFULNESS OF NATIVE 

WORKERS— SWEET BUT SAD THOUGHTS ON QUITTING JAPAN. 

Steamship ''''Port Augusta" October 26, 1887. 

Our tour through Japan has been one of pleasure, but at the 
same time one of no little toil. We had so little time at our dis- 
posal, and there was so much to be seen, that we have been 
forced to be up early and generally to bed late. We have had no 
easy coaches in which to ride and look, and to rest as we rode 
and as we looked. The jinrickisha, although in many respects a 
most delightful conveyance, is yet one that causes great fatigue 
when constantly employed, and for such long stretches as we 
have used it. The tread is so narrow that the slightest inequal- 
ity on the road brings sidelong jolts, which cannot be resisted. 
A run of 50 to 60 miles a day in one of these little man-sulkies 
is followed by a somewhat racking pain in the small of the 
back, and causes the traveller to feel very stiff when he ends 
his course. It is then that the blind massage-rubber comes de- 
lightfully into play. 

We were anxious to see and study the country as much as pos- 
sible, without any attempt or pretence of diving deep into any 
subject or of solving national problems, but rather to place our- 
selves in a position which would enable us to study and under- 
stand what we may read and hear when we shall have leisure. 
My letters are intended to enable others to see somewhat the 
things I may see, so that they can more intelligently study the 
country we pass through, in the writings of others who may 
claim to know more than we know and to understand what we 
simply observe on the surface. But while we have employed our 
time in such way as to make it as practically useful as possible, 
we have endeavored to enjoy the novelty of our position and the 
beauties of our surroundings. In other words, to be tourists as 
well as students. The Americans are to-day the greatest tourists 
of the world. To these I shall devote this — my last Japanese 
letter, and shall try to show them how, when they have done up 
the European continent, and fully enjoyed the vast field of beauty 
afforded by our own land and by the Canadian dominion, this 
old-new empire will offer them a great deal which will be entirely 
novel among men, their manner and works, and at the same time 

87 



88 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a mass of varied and beautiful scenery, unsurpassed, if not un- 
equaled, anywhere else they may have been. 

We have been forced to forego visiting many localities said 
to be of great beauty, but have visited enough to get samples of 
each and every kind of scenery. We were too late to climb Fuji, 
from whose lofty cone the panorama is said to be equal to any in 
the world. But we have had fine views from considerable heights. 
We saw no snow-clad pinnacles piercing the sky as in the Alps, 
nor yet the home-like landscapes one sees in England. There 
are no homes nestled down in copses of wood, or mansions sur- 
rounded by lordly parks. The music of no distant church-bell 
reaches and lulls us, nor do the carol of the mountain herdsman, 
the chants des vaches, come in wavy deliciousness from any dis- 
tant lofty pasturage. But in place of these, one looks upon 
mountains cutting the sky with lofty cones, green to the very 
summit, and clothed in a wealth of forests far up their sloping^ 
sides — ranges of hills from i,ooo to 5,000 feet high, not stretch- 
ing in fatiguing sameness, but notched, broken, bent in short 
curves, then lifting into sharp points, never the same in any 
direction, and never hurting the eye by rocky coldness or sandy 
or brown barrenness. Few peaks exist in the land so lofty as to 
reach beyond the line of vegetation. When the tree-line is passed 
there comes grassy verdure so luxuriant that the tall heights 
seem clothed in emerald velvet. One looks far up narrow valleys,^ 
which elsewhere would be wild gorges, and sees them terraced 
far into their depths and variegated with various crops in all 
stages of maturity, from those but lately planted and freshly 
green, to others golden and ready for the sickle. Every moun- 
tain slope, every mountain gorge, is thus terraced as far up as 
streams offer the opportunity for irrigation. 

In other lands fields on level flats only are supposed to be capa- 
'ble of artificial watering, but here one sees even rice fields 2,000 
and upward feet above the sea on mountain slopes which any- 
where I have heretofore been would have been entirely aban- 
doned to pasturage. The climate is so humid that brooks have 
their sources very near the summits of ranges. These brooks are 
caught and made to flood little fields, frequently only a few feet 
wide. The overflow covers another range of fields a little lower 
down, then runs into the stream to water farms on yet lower 
grounds and in the valleys. In some of the mountain ranges, 
which are composed of disintegrated granite, there are no springs. 
In such, the winter and early rains are caught and held in ponds 
and lakelets, some only a few feet across, others larger, till one 
sees some of them pretty little artificial lakes of from a quarter 
of an acre in size up to one or more acres. The embankments 
holding these waters are often 20 to 40 feet high, and the ponds 
are stocked with fine fish. These artificial reservoirs enable fields 
to wave in green where otherwise all would be desolation, and 



PICTURESQUE FARMS AND VILLAGES. 89 

help to make pretty landscapes where, but for them, all would be 
barren and unsightly. In some of these upper farm-lands, the 
tourist is charmed by the quaint sight of rice, after harvest, hung 
to dry on the gnarled branches of the umbrella pine and other 
spreading trees. Often rice is thus hung on branches 30 and 40 
feet above the ground, and at nightfall reminds one of the moss- 
grown trees of Louisiana, only the rice hangs in thicker masses 
than ever the mosses grow. Rice, by the way, here is nearly al- 
ways hung to dry when harvested. Rain is so frequent and dews 
so heavy that it cannot be dried except along road-edges or on 
poles or trees. 

The system of terracing mountain sides for general farm pur- 
poses is, as far as I know, peculiar to Japan. On the Rhine and 
in France and Italy steep slopes are thus managed, to make them 
the homes of the grape, but the localities are few and the extent 
so small that one can refer to them only to enable you to know 
how millions here obtain their entire farming land by thus wrest- 
ing it from worthlessness. This system of terrace-farming is one 
of the great sources of beauty in Japanese scenery. In many 
lands farms on plains are pretty when viewed from heights. In 
Belgium and parts of Germany it is a pleasing sight to look down 
on the long, narrow fields in different crops, looking like old- 
fashioned carpets woven in rows of different colors ; but here the 
fields are so small and so irregular in shape, being cut into every 
form to enable the level to be preserved, that one looks down 
upon a patchwork, a genuine crazy quilt, of a dozen different 
colorings. Then, too, here trees on all plains are more or less 
abundant — little fields are grown in mulberry, others in bamboo, 
still others in orchards of low, trained pears and plums. Persim- 
mons, golden with their beautiful fruits, some larger than hens' 
eggs and shaped like them, are about every village, and trees 
skirt every large irrigating ditch or canal, so that the flattest 
river estuaries are variegated and pretty. The Japanese persimmon 
is a very fine fruit, and when dried is a good substitute for the 
fig. Villages are so plentiful that no plain is without several in 
view. From the old feudal castle at Nagoya we counted 70 odd 
villages in sight to the naked eye — villages of all sizes, those of 
30 or 40 houses up to others of 500. 

In the mountains many of the villages and little towns are ex- 
ceedingly picturesque, hanging on the sides of the gorges ; houses 
perched on projecting rocks overlooking feathery cascades ; houses 
so close together that the little streets are almost roofed by the 
jutting eaves. Above such villages on the mountain sides are 
the gnarled and grotesque umbrella pines, with their yellow 
trunks and branches and spreading boughs. Dense thickets of 
feathery bamboo and of camellias and other waxy evergreen 
shrubs enclose the lanes and roads. These adjuncts add to the 
romantic picturesqueness of many mountain villages. 



90 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

In some mountain localities beautiful little jinrickisha roads, as 
smooth and well paved as one of our boulevards, climb up the 
valleys by a grade so easy and well engineered that they could be 
used for a railway track but for the shortness of the curves. 
These pretty roads mount on one side of the narrow valleys, 
climbing higher and higher, the torrent getting farther and far- 
ther below, till one looks down i,ooo feet upon the foaming 
water, while beautiful slopes lift high above, and perhaps are 
wrapped in a soft veil of cloud. Perched high up the gorge, the 
traveller will, after the climb of a few miles, find himself in a 
pretty hamlet, and enjoy his evening or his mid-day lunch in a 
hotel deliciously clean, and as cool as could be wished. Nearly 
all travellers content themselves by a voyage by steamer from 
Yokohama to Kobe, at the beginning of the inland sea. One 
should go from one to the other of these points either by the 
great Tokaido road through fine scenery and a dense population, 
or by the Nakasendo through the heart of the country and fine 
mountain scenery. Indeed, one should take both of these trips. 
But, as I said, most travellers content themselves with the sea 
voyage between these points. They see in the locality of Hiogo, 
Ozaka, and Kioto, several ranges of mountains, composed of the 
detritus of granite rocks. These ranges have a somewhat sterile 
appearance, with deep gorges of yellow or gray sand ; dunes of 
sand left everywhere, and not more than half relieved by the 
forests climbing the mountain sides. I am unable to comprehend 
the causes which brought about the disintegration of this hard 
stone. There must have been, at some period of the past, a 
peculiar chemical composition of the atmosphere to have enabled 
it to melt down the mountains and turn them into granitic sand. 
Water alone will destroy mountains of sandstone, but something 
else was needed to change these granite hills. People who have 
travelled here as the majority do, will think my pictures of 
Japanese scenery overdrawn ; but these localities are exceptions 
rather than the rule. 

I spoke of the Japanese saying: "See Nikko before you say 
kekko " (splendid). This referred more to the temples in that 
sacred locality than to the scenery. The genuine tourist, how- 
ever, who is not afraid of a good and heavy tramp, or who can 
mount a Japanese pony, will find the temples afford less than half 
the delights to be found about the sacred town. In every direc- 
tion are fine excursions, some of them of almost unequalled 
charms. One I shall always delight to recall — that of some 
20 miles, to Chusenji Lake and Umato sulphur springs. Fear- 
ful that we would be unequal to the walk, we had one pony 
between us. And what a pony ! The horse here is said to be 
indigenous to the soil. He is a sort of doubly enlarged Shetland 
pony, shaggy mane, and foretop as heavy as a Jap's head of hair. 
He carries his head very low, and seems as ugly and determined 



JAPANESE HORSES. 91 

in his disposition as his master is cheerful and easy-going. The 
horses are entire, and are used for riding and for the army, while 
the mares are employed in raising colts and carrying packs. The 
saddle-horses go when they please and stop when they will. 
They are the most gallant brutes on earth, and every lady-horse 
we met called forth all the chivalry of my steed, and once or 
twice got me into a scrape which gave me trouble to get out of. 
One advantage, however, accrued to me — the boys dared not 
ride ; and, while we theoretically rode in turn, I was generally in 
the saddle. Our road was up a river of a crystalline clearness I 
had never conceived of. The perfectly white clear water rushed 
over rocks in every imaginable way, now cataract, then rapid, 
crossed every half mile by odd bridges, some of them springing 
from rock to rock, through which went tumbling the rushing tor- 
rents in wildest fury. The road-way of these bridges is never 
over four feet wide, and without any guard on the sides, the 
floors being fagots lashed down with grass ropes. My steed, who 
never failed to cry halt when he met a pack-animal, to find 
whether he were meeting one of his sweethearts or not, displayed 
the most discreet care when crossing these frail structures, never 
once lifting his nose a foot above the floor. By the way, horses 
for the saddle are shod with iron ; all others, as well as the pack- 
cows and bulls have their feet protected by shoes of straw, and 
very excellent shoes they are. The straw sandal for a man costs 
about a cent and a half of our money. I doubt if a full set of 
horse-shoes cost any more. In some parts of the roads we have 
travelled we could almost say the roads were paved with worn- 
out horse- and men-sandals. Whenever the wearer finds his foot 
protection too much worn he discards it and dons another, of 
which he usually has an extra pair. Every tea-house along the 
roads, and there are many, have good supplies of these cheap 
foot protectors. 

But I was speaking of the excursion from Nikko to Umato. 
The road is along the river, between beautifully forested moun- 
tains, of most picturesque forms, one of them having an elevation 
of over 8,000 feet. The vegetation is of great luxuriance, lofty 
pines and cedars, beech of large size, birch, elm, and many other 
trees, such as are the denizens of temperate climates, standing 
side by side with those one is accustomed to suppose the products 
of the tropics alone. It is one of the peculiarities of this land, 
that not only does nearly every kind of tropical vegetation grow 
in great luxuriance, but mixed up with these are the growths of 
the temperate zones, in equal sturdiness. Along our road were 
thickets of rhododendrons and tree-hydrangeas, the latter 10 to 
20 feet high ; thickets of bamboo and of birch trees, glossy- 
leaved evergreen oaks, interlacing their boughs with those of 
beech and gnarled deciduous oaks ; monkey-slipper trees, with 
crooked branches, looking as hard and smooth as if made of 



92 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

bronze, and bronze in color, twisting their tortuous limbs annong 
those of the maple and elm. 

In this one day's walk we saw four beautiful cascades, tumbling 
down into the wildest gorges from heights varying from 50 to 
230 feet, and two singular falls — I scarcely know whether to call 
them cascades or not — one having a fall of over 200 feet down a 
smooth incline of 40 degrees, the water rushing down with a 
width of about 25 feet in a mass of foam, over a bed of tufa as 
black as polished ebony. The other, on the same stream, tumbles 
in a succession of such falls from a much greater height. One of 
the cascades leaps from a jutting ledge so far over the gulf below 
that the pious natives have placed a life-sized statue of one of the 
gods high up under the sheet, and a picturesque temple on a lofty 
ledge, attainable only by the climbing path under the falling 
sheet of water. Two of the cascades and two of the cataracts are 
very unique and very beautiful, and many of the whirls and rush- 
ing rapids along the river for miles would in England be of suffi- 
cient beauty to attract tourists from a distance. At an elevation 
of some 4,300 feet we came to Lake Chusenji, a sheet of crystal, 
seven miles long by a mile in width, 400 feet deep, nestled down 
among forest-clad heights from 1,000 to 4,000 feet above the 
surface. 

A lunch of delicious salmon trout on a piazza of polished floors 
jutting over the water prepared us for a further walk of eight 
miles, now along the tumbling stream, then in thickets of flower- 
ing shrubs, over a beautiful prairie of about 8,000 acres, along the 
shores of two other lakes of say 30 to 300 acres extent, at a height 
of 5,500 feet, which brought us to the hot sulphur baths of Umato. 
Thousands of pilgrims visit Nikko each year, and after paying their 
devotions in the temples, climb to this spot to wash out any fur- 
ther impurities of the body and soul. Men and women bathe 
promiscuously, without shame, and without any sense of im- 
modesty. If I be correctly informed, the Japanese have no con- 
ception of any past sins. No forbidden fruit ever tempted their 
forefathers to entail sin and death upon them. In praying they 
never ask to have a sin forgiven. They pray for a pure heart and 
a spotless soul, for blessings of a temporal character to be show- 
ered upon them and theirs. A clean body, in their estimation, 
conduces to a clean character. They take their hot baths nightly, 
and, when able to do so, crowd the natural thermal baths in which 
the country greatly abounds. They are pronounced immoral 
because they bathe men and women together. But they certainly 
have no feeling that there is any immorality in it. We had a 
striking illustration of this at the thermal bath of Arima, a few . 
miles back of Kobe. We three were in the high-priced tank — two 
cents each. Beyond a screen was a cent tank, about eight feet 
square. Around it were 13 men and women, hanging by their 
hands to the edges like frogs to a floating log. In the half-cent 



JAPANESE SCENERY. 93 

tank, much larger, were dozens of laborers and coolies. Presently 
a man and woman passed us, and finding the next tank rather 
full, slid into ours. They were man and wife, and in nature's own 
dishabille. They thought us Japs, and were disposed to be talka- 
tive, but as soon as they found we were foreigners the woman 
became confused, and blushed. She knew we, being of a differ- 
ent civilization, might regard her as immodest. But going into 
the bath with her husband showed she did not regard it as im- 
proper to enter it with strangers and other men. It is their 
custom, and is not much stranger than that I once saw in Asia 
Minor, where we met a dozen or more women fording a stream 
nearly waist-deep. They did not wet their garments, but would 
have considered themselves disgraced had we seen their faces. 
After all, the more I see and learn the more fully I concede the 
truth of England's motto — " Honi soit qui mal y pense.'' 

The next best excursion we took for scenery was in passing 
over Hakone pass on the overland trip from Yokohama to Kioto. 
In the Nikko neighborhood our pleasure was principally in look- 
ing upward. Here we looked downward. Fuji is to all central 
Japan the one great landmark, and is, in many of the finest views, 
the great attraction. From every direction he is seen a perfect 
cone, with apparently easy slopes. When we passed nearest him, 
about the 5th of October, snow had already fallen about his sum- 
mit, and ran down more or less in lines some 2,000 or 3,000 feet. It 
looked as if he had on a lace mantle, or, rather, collar, which 
showed his dark neck through its meshes and points. 

We expected to sail by the Japanese mail-boat for Shanghai on 
the 20th from Kobe, but found her so crowded that we could get 
no rooms. We then found that the Port Augusta was to sail 
to-day. We took tickets on her, and are the only passengers. 
She was at Vancouver when we arrived there, the 1st of August, 
in the employ, for one trip, of the Canadian Pacific Company. 
She had a perfectly smooth sea over, while, a month later, ours 
was an unusually rough passage. She now goes to China to get 
a cargo for New York. We were somewhat disappointed in the 
great inland sea. There are a vast number of islands, some 
mere grotesque rocks, others forest-clad and green, many of 
them quite lofty, and not a few lifting from the water in per- 
fect cones. They were so close together that oftentimes we 
seemed to be thoroughly land-locked. But there was not the 
terrace-farming we had been led by enthusiastic book-makers 
to expect. Comparatively few of the islands were terraced, 
and none to any considerable height. Its extravagant praise 
comes from those who have not seen the interior of the coun- 
try', with which its beauty cannot compare. The sea was filled 
by day with little fishing sampans, so plentiful that one is wil- 
ling to believe that there are, as claimed, several millions of 
people, more or less, directly engaged in, or connected with, fish- 



94 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

ing. In more than half of the boats seen on this and other trips 
there would be a small boy, from ten to fifteen years old, and a 
man. These little fellows work an oar as steadily as do the men, 
and seem to be expert boatmen and fishermen almost from their 
cradle. Sometimes a little girl was in the place of the boy, the 
gods not having blessed her parents with one of the stronger sex. 
Women are not exempt from work in Japan, and although treated 
with kindness and tender affection, they do their share of the 
hard work of the land. The western inlet to the inland sea at 
Shimonosaki is about 250 miles from Kobe, and is deserving all 
the praise so lavishly heaped upon the whole sea. The passage 
here is narrow. The hills and mountains are lofty, all very green, 
and frequently terraced high up the sides. As we rushed through 
with a tide flowing six knots an hour we had a feeling of great 
regret that we were so soon past the beautiful spot. For the 
balance of the day we were among many fine islands in the 
Corean Strait. While somewhat disappointed, we yet feel that 
we have nowhere else had any water trip near so fine as this of 
nearly 400 miles, and regret we could not have laid ofT so as to 
have it all by daylight. 

When, however, we waked up on the 22d and looked out upon 
the little bay of Nagasaki all the balance was forgotten. This is 
beyond any thing we can say of the beautiful. Imagine a bay 
whose mouth is less than a third of a mile wide, running with a 
width of less than one, some seven or eight miles through moun- 
tains from 500 to 1,400 feet high. The mountains come down to 
the water in rapid slopes, with narrow valleys and deep gorges 
intervening. On one side the city lies upon a narrow shore, run- 
ning back into the valleys and deep gorges. The hill-sides are 
more or less clothed in trees, half-hidden among which are many 
handsome bungalows and terraced and hedged gardens. High 
above the town, which has a population of over 100,000, the entire 
hills are terraced and green with turnips and other root crops, or 
white with buckwheat. In the harbor lay at anchor seven men- 
of-war and a dozen steamships, and a vast number of sailing and 
rowing sampans. The sampan is not rowed but sculled by one 
or more oars set in the side, and worked like the fin of a fish. 
We took lunch aboard the flag-ship Brooklyn, Rear-Admiral 
Chandler, and had a pleasant time in her ward-room. The Brook- 
lyn is an old wooden ship of pretty model, but would have a sorry 
time in an engagement with any of the first-class vessels which 
lie near her. There were the iron-clad Turenne, of the French, 
the iron-clad Constance, of England, and an iron-clad Russian. 
But we felt with pride that \.\v& personnel oi our ofificers surpassed 
that of any of those we saw while in the city. Most Americans 
seem to feel a sort of shame when they see our poor show of a 
navy in these waters side by side with the powerful steamers of 
England, France, Russia, Japan, and other nations. I must say 



MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN. 95 

that I do not have any such feehng, any more than I feel morti- 
fied when I look at a Grecian or Roman ruin, and reilect that we 
have none, or when I admire a royal palace and know it has no 
counterpart in my own land. America's strength is in the iron- 
hearted men who tread her ships, and not in the iron-clad ships 
which carry privileged classes. I believe in being prepared in 
times of peace for war, but not in having too many ships to strut 
around the world for show and glitter. We had as much pride 
when treading the deck of the Brooklyn and seeing the Stars and 
Stripes floating over a sturdy body of American tars, as we would 
have had if she had been a solid ram, and much more than if she 
had been a splendid ship like the Russian near by, and her sailors 
reeling in stupid drunkenness, as so many of the Muscovite crew 
were Sunday evening. Nagasaki is said to be the worst city in 
Japan. The Christian nations have set it a bad example, and for 
the first time since our arrival we saw absolutely intoxicated 
Japanese swearing like mad in rugged English. They have no 
native oaths. Their worst epithet for a man is: "You fool," 
"You beast." But we heard one fellow swearing like a London 
hackman in pretty good Saxon. I hope the good missionaries 
will keep the " cuss words " out of the island. A round oath 
when a man is really mad I can stand, but the oaths uttered by 
so many of our people merely as expletives are very disgusting. 

The missionaries of Japan ought to do their level best to show 
their thankfulness to the Lord, for He has certainly cast their 
lines in pleasant places. In every city where there are conces- 
sions these are the best part of the town, and the houses and 
grounds of the missionaries are among the most charming. The 
prettiest bungalows are those of the missionaries. The hedges 
and flowers of the missionaries are the greenest and the brightest, 
and the tidiest children and the best-drilled servants are theirs. 
In the summer they all go to the mountains, where, in tent life, 
they spend a beautiful two months. Altogether, commend me 
to the life of a missionary in Japan. I have no doubt they do 
their duty. I have not too much faith in the direct conversions 
they make, but, indirectly, they do great good. They inaugurate 
education, especially among the women. Christianity will follow 
in the wake. It will be an intelligent Christianity, even if men 
turn Christians for the sake of trade. I do not know that this is 
worse than people among us who attach themselves to a particu- 
lar church for the sake of social position. When men become 
Christians in the broad sense for policy, they will have a better 
chance of becoming Christians in the narrow sense from conviction. 

While in Nagasaki we had an opportunity of studying the 
people very advantageously. We took on 1,200 to 1,500 tons of 
coal. This was done by men, women, and children working with 
little straw baskets. At 7 o'clock in the morning, after we got 
out of dock, in which our ship was cleaned, a couple of dozen 



96 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

large coal-boats and dozens of little sampans filled with people 
came around us. Soon the decks were crowded — men shouting, 
boys romping, girls laughing. Such a bedlam I never heard. On 
the ship and about it were nearly i,ooo people. Soon the 
hatches were opened, and 14 small platform scales were put up. 
To each scale was a tub, to hold 112 pounds. The coal is sold 
by the long ton. Ladders were erected from the sampan coal- 
boats below to the deck of the ship. Women, girls, and boys 
then formed a line from the boats below, up these ladders, and 
along the decks to the hatchways. These lines held from 30 to 
35 people, in some cases considerably more, so as to reach a boat 
which was outside of those next the ship. Then the work com- 
menced, the baskets, holding from 12 to 15 pounds each, being 
started from the boat and run from hand to hand to the tub at 
the hatch. As soon as this was filled a man would empty it over 
into the hold. The baskets came up so fast and in such regular 
order that they seemed to be imbued with life, and simply sliding 
along the uplifted hands. As the baskets would mount they took 
a somewhat rotary motion. So rapidly did they move that a tub 
would be filled in very few minutes. Among the workers were 
women and girls from about 13 years up. To each gang there 
were three or four men, one to empty the tub, one to empty the 
basket, and one at a heavy point near. So rapid were the motions 
that they seemed often the work of machinery. From morning till 
night these people worked, stopping only at noon for an hour for 
their two ounces of rice and their lacquer boxes of fish and vege- 
tables. Not an angry word was ever heard. All were jolly, 
laughing, and talking. Now and then some woman would say 
something to her neighbor at the expense of us three who were 
watching from the quarter-deck — then one by one looked and 
laughed. A brighter, happier set of people I have never seen at 
'a pic-nic — indeed, none as bright, for at a pic-nic there is always a 
sort of listless appearance of having nothing to do. Here all 
were busy, and willingly busy ; all were working, and working 
with a heart. Other ships were coaling near by. In other words, 
these people were not at a pic-nic, but this thing goes on more or 
less through the whole year, the great Japanese coal-fields being 
close by. They were all clean and tidy. Many of the girls had 
their hair done up in elaborate style. Over every head was a 
blue kerchief tied under the chin to keep out the dust. Many of 
the gowns were patched, and some had holes in them, but not a 
single one had the slightest appearance of untidiness. All were 
clean, all looked cheerful, all were ready to laugh, and all seemed 
happy. Yet the men who did the heavy work received only 15 
and 20 cents a day, the women ten and twelve, and the children 
five and seven ; add to this two ounces of rice for their lunch. 

These people were the wives and children of fishermen and 
farmers in the near neighborhood, who do this sort of work 



CHEERFULNESS OF JAPANESE LABORERS. 97 

when the crops are laid by and when their husbands and fathers 
are out at sea. We noticed many of the young women and 
children with delicate, well-cut features and sweet expressions of 
face. They evidently do not regard work as a hardship. What 
right have they thus to toil and be happy ? In civilized Chris- 
tian lands men are being taught that work is a penalty, and 
many go at it as if they had a grudge against their employers. 
Here these people work for a pittance, and then seem to feel 
kindly toward the man who pays it. 

As I have said in my other letters, they are a strange people. 
I have studied them as best I could. Heretofore, in travelling 
in other lands, I have been able to hold some intercourse with 
the people, whereby we could interchange ideas. But I have not 
attempted to talk with these, even through an interpreter. I 
have studied them as I study the crows flying at eventide to 
their roosts ; as I study the ants climbing over the tiny hill and 
valley, mountain and gorge, in their ceaseless toils ; as I study the 
spider spinning gossamer threads and with them making upon 
the air geometrical figures ; as I study the bees in musical hum 
toiling for sweets. I have studied these people and leave them 
with keen regret that I had not more time to give to the study. 
If any should be induced by what I write to make a tour of 
Japan I envy them, for their pleasure is in the future, and not, 
like mine, all in the past. When we weighed anchor, I had for 
the last time trod upon the mikado's soil. 

We sailed out of Nagasaki's beautiful harbor, close under 
rocky PafTenburg, where so many Christians were hurled to their 
death. We watched the land as it receded, and then I sat down 
to my work and have worked hard all day. And now, late at 
night, I close this letter and thus end my visit to the Land of 
the Rising Sun. Three months ago to-day we left Chicago to 
commence our race with old Sol. It was with expectations of 
pleasure to be enjoyed, but yet with no small misgivings at thus 
parting with those we loved. Six weeks ago to-day, late in the 
afternoon, the typhoon had gone to the eastward, its angry centre, 
fortunately for us, having passed some miles to the south, and 
many of us were on deck looking to the west, hoping to be able 
ere nightfall to cry " Land ho ! " The sun was struggling to 
drive away the clouds lying between him and the earth, and by 
fits and starts shot down his pale-gray rays. The low clouds 
were racing wildly along, chasing each other like mad coursers. 
Within a few degrees of the western horizon there were no 
clouds, but the air was so full of spray that the sun sank down- 
ward red as a ball of blood. We kept our eyes fixed upon his 
bloodshot face, for the captain told us we would probably see 
land just as he would dip below the horizon. He dipped lower 
.and lower, when our skipper quietly said : " See, there 's land ! " 
And loJ across the sun's lower disk there was drawn a zigzag 



98 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

line of a broken mountain range, and close to the left was lifted 
the clear-cut cone of mighty Fuji, 72 miles away. It was thus, 
we first saw Japan — to us the land of the setting sun. For six 
weeks we have journeyed in and about that land, among its 
light-hearted, its strange and incongruous people ; its cheerful 
and happy, its bright and generous, loving and modest people ; 
its down-trodden and toiling, its suspicious and immoral, re- 
vengeful and innocent people ; for they seem to possess all of 
these contradictory characteristics. We have wandered among 
and have studied them as best we could. In spite of their glar- 
ing faults we like them, almost love them. And this morning, as 
the sun was gilding the heights about Nagasaki harbor, we came 
out from among them and cried out as we passed Paffenburg's 
bloody rocks, " Farewell, good Japanese, good-bye ! " For six 
weeks we have wandered among the mountains and valleys of the 
land ; its dark gorges and terraced slopes, its forest-clad heights 
and grain-covered plains. We have wondered and admired-. We 
have been happy, where birds are without note and insects make 
nights musical ; where wild flowers deck mountain and valley, 
forest and prairie, flowers of every form and of every hue, but 
none of them endowed with fragrance, or ever inviting the bee 
to sip from their cups ; a land where frowning crags and dark 
gorges were made to strike terror to, and wring awe from, the 
bravest heart, yet clothed in trees and shrubs and mantled in 
garlands, bid the youthful swain and gentle maid to wander in 
dreams and to sigh for rosy love. We have been happy, yet the 
happiness of one of us was all the time tinged with sadness. 

Thirty-six years ago he had wandered afoot and alone over 
Alpine heights and through Alpine valleys. Before him then there 
was life and its gilded hopes. He looked upward and was filled 
with gladness, for he could sing — 

' ' The bravest and brightest that ever was sung, 
Shall be, and must be, the lot of the young." 

He was alone, and yet never alone. By his side was one of 
his fancy's creation — gentle, loving, dark-eyed, and caressing, 
who would yet look with him upon all he now so much enjoyed. 
His every look was then upward. His sun was always climbing 
and gilding the lofty pinnacles. There, clothed in garments woven 
of sunbeams, was the being who was to make his years years of 
brightness. He was alone and yet never alone, and never sad, 
for there was always the reflection in his heart of a glorious 
to-morrow. But here in Japan, in the midst of the beautiful, 
there came through the pine needles a gentle dirge and a sweet, 
sad song of the past. There was, and could be, no loving eye to 
look upon and revel in the dreamland around. There was not, 
and never could be again, a loving heart, real or in fancy, to beat 
in tune to his own pulsations. There was not, and never could 



AN OLD DREAM. 99 

be again, a gentle voice in loving tones to whisper : " Hope and 
live, live and hope, for there will yet be in this world a bright and 
rosy to-morrow." 

This afternoon we three, the only passengers of our good ship, 
stood upon the deck, and as the sun hurried down to the west, 
looked earnestly to the east for one more, one last sight of the 
land we left. The captain told us we would see no more land 
until the Chinese islands should lift up from the sea. But we 
looked, and far off there rose a point — a mere point. It was a 
mountain cone on the westernmost of the mikado's islands. We 
looked, and as the last ray of the setting sun gilded its far-off 
height one of us sighed : " Farewell, Niphon, land of the rising 
sun ! Farewell, Japan, land of dreams ! Good-bye !" 



CHAPTER XIII. 

YANG-TSE-KIANG— CHINESE FARMING— FISH AND MODES OF CATCH- 
ING—APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY— MISSIONARIES, 
CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT. 

Steattier " Kiang-Foo," on the Yang-Tse-Kiang, China^ 

JVove f fiber 8, 1887. 

A LONG while ago, so long that I cannot fix the date as having 
been within any given five or six years, when I was a big boy, a 
flood in the lower Mississippi dug a crevasse in front of the town 
of Lake Providence, La., and carried away some eighty or more 
acres of its land. The local newspapers alluded to the fact in this 
terse phrase : " Where our ofifice stood yesterday now rolls the 
mighty Mississippi ; out of respect for the father of waters we 
moved out and he moved in." Whenever in my journeyings this 
great river has come into view I have recalled this epigram, and 
involuntarily have taken off my hat with a feeling of awe, and then 
would swell with American pride that ours was not only the long- 
est, but the greatest and grandest of fresh-water streams. But now, 
after having spent over seven days on the Yang-tse-Kiang (Celes- 
tial for " Broad River ") ; after steaming so many hundred miles 
over its mighty floods, floods which move with a current as swift as 
that of our own great river, yet so broad and of such depth that 
oftentimes the movement is scarcely more apparent than are those 
of the tides in an open sea ; after looking over the thousands of 
square miles made by its droppings throughout countless ages ; 
after sailing over a great yellow sea, dyed by its red waters ; after 
looking down day after day upon its placid bosom — placid in its 
broad reaches, yet, when occasionally contracted to a mile in 
width, rushing in angry, whirling swirls of waters red and thick 
with the washings of 450,ooo,0(X) acres of territory, washings 
not of coarse and sterile sands, but of soil of almost impalpable 
fineness; red and thick, yet teeming with innumerable fishes in 
great variety, furnishing food to millions of people ; — after seeing 
and learning these things I am forced to lower my national pride 
and acknowledge that while we have the longest, we have not the 
grandest, of rivers. Hereafter I will touch my hat to the " father 
of waters," but I uncover to this, and hail it " mother of waters." 

The Mississippi is a moving, active symbol of resistless force, of 
uncontrolled and uncontrollable power, and of inexorable energy. 



THE YANG-TSE-KIANG. loi 

The Yang-tse-Kiang is the very embodiment of lofty dignity, of 
conscious might, and of calm, unbending majesty. Catching 
its first cup 3,630 odd miles from the sea, in the great table- 
land, the heart of Asia, where is claimed to be the pillar of 
the world and the cradle of man, for 20 odd hundred miles 
it washes the feet of vast mountain ranges with lofty peaks 
and slopes, said to be of marvellous fertility and clothed in 
almost tropical exuberance and therefore of considerable hu- 
midity, draining great valleys, peopled with dense popula- 
tions, cutting, in canyons from 1,000 to 3,000 feet deep, through 
mighty rock barriers, it rushes down gorges in fearful rapids, but 
so deep that steamers are now being built to navigate them, and 
spreads itself, about 1,000 miles from its mouth, into a broad, 
dignified stream one and two miles wide, and deep enough to 
float the largest ocean steamers. 

At Hankow, where tea-ships load, 600 odd miles from the 
sea, it spreads out two to three miles in width and in the 
summer months has a depth of 60 feet in the channel. Here 
congregate the huge ocean steamers during the tea season, and, 
loaded with the fragrant leaf, steam for the sea, with nearly the 
speed which they maintain on the ocean, to the great western 
cities. A hundred and thirty miles from the river's mouth it 
becomes still broader, and maintains to the sea a width ranging 
from five to eight miles, and when we went up it was as smooth 
and glassy as a lake. It is now, on our homeward run, somewhat 
white-capped. So great is the volume of the river that, although 
the tide rises at the mouth of the Wunsung, 18 miles up which 
the city of Shanghai is situated, to a height of 12 feet, yet the 
water is not even brackish, and even the water-supply for the city 
is taken from the river at high tide. Indeed, far below this to 
the very mouth it is fresh enough to drink. Forty miles from 
the mouth, near the Wunsung, the great island ' Tsung-wung' 
begins, dividing the river into two great channels on to the sea. 
A hundred years ago this island had no existence. It is the riv- 
er's offspring during a century's labor, and now supports a popu- 
lation of 1,000,000 people. When we sailed toward the Chinese 
shore 12 days ago, when yet 20 miles out at sea, the whole 
surface was quite muddy, and the captain said we were in the 
Yang-tse. 

Stretching along the eastern coast of China is a low, and to a 
great extent, absolutely flat plain, over r,ooo miles north and 
south, running back, the books of travellers assert, over 500 
miles. From my own observation on this journey, and from 
what I can learn from some intelligent missionaries, I am led 
to think this is a mistake. Broken, short ridges of low moun- 
tains are seen from the steamer after ascending the river loO 
miles. These at much less than 200 miles, are constantly in 
view on one or the other shore line, now close to the river 



I02 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and then lo to 15 miles or more away. After passing Chinkiang, 
180 miles inland, these ridges are constant and seem piled up 
one behind the other as far as the glass will enable one to 
see through openings and gaps. Indeed, one gentleman as- 
sured me that, so far from plains being up here a rule, they 
are the exception. The bulk of the country is made up of low, 
broken mountains, with valleys and plains interspersed. The 
mountains quite frequently run down to the river in bold head- 
lands and rocky bluffs several hundred feet high, and many of 
them very picturesque. Lofty rocks now and then lift from the 
bed of the river, covering an area of a half acre or more. These 
are precipitous cliffs marked in the charts from 150 to 300 feet 
in height. A small portion of each is a steep, broken slope, 
growing small trees and surmounted with bushes. Somewhere 
on each is perched an old picturesque temple. The rocky cliffs 
are almost black with thousands of cormorants perched on every 
projection large enough to hold a bird. At the points where 
these headlands approached the water's edge the river is nar- 
rowed to near a mile. Through these narrows it rushes madly 
and makes what the boatmen term bad "chow-chow" water. 
These headlands and the mountains are sufficiently numerous to 
relieve the voyage of too much sameness and monotony. Indeed, 
in several localities, the scenery is quite fine, but is hardly suffi- 
cient of itself to attract the tourist in search of, and loving the 
beautiful. But the noble river, its vast surface generally so calm, 
its great depth and mighty performances, render the trip up it 
very interesting, and the scenery is sufficiently varied and fine to 
make it a voyage of pleasure. I found the return trip nearly as 
interesting as the upward one. This is somewhat more so than it 
would otherwise be, from the fact that the locality we passed at 
night going up, we see by day coming down. 

And now, while I write, my letter is and will be less connected, 
because of the constant temptation to go to the door and use my 
glass. The great plain mentioned as lying over 1,000 miles along 
the seacoast, is apparently alluvial, and has been made by the 
deposit from this river and from the turbulent Hoang-Ho, which 
aided in its mighty work in the northern part of the empire. 
That river, from what I can learn, is much like the Mississippi 
and its great branch, the Missouri. Where its dykes are laid, the 
river constantly elevates its bed, and has frequently burst its con- 
finement, cutting new channels to the sea, carrying destruction of 
a great amount of property, and killing millions of people. Its 
disposition to break over the artificial barriers is a source of con- 
stant dread to the people, who never know when the monster may 
shake his tawny mane and sweep them and their property into 
the ocean. Its mouth is to-day several hundred miles away from 
the exit of not many years ago. Like the Mississippi, it cannot 
be bridled, and is impatient even of the slightest restraint. Had 



CHINESE RIVERS. 103 

our Southern planters been content to turn sweat into upland 
cotton instead of trying to confine the Father of Waters between 
miserable earth-works, the floods of the Mississippi valley would 
have carried the washings of countless millions of plowed fields 
down to the lower swamps, and would have made millions of 
acres of splendid lands the homes of a healthy people, instead of 
leaving them, as they now are, under the imperial sway of the 
tnosquito and the ague. This is what the Lord intended, and had 
He been permitted to work out nature's designs, cotton would 
never have attempted to usurp a throne, secession would have 
been a thing unborn, and the democratic party, instead of spend- 
ing years to undo mistakes, would have made America the home 
of 100,000,000 of contented, happy people, all enjoying a com- 
parative equality of moderate fortune ; and the monopolist and 
the anarchist would never^ — at least for ages — have become natu- 
ralized exotics. But I am growing politically sentimental. Senti- 
mental I am willing to be in my old age ; political — kind fortune 
guard me ! and protect me ! 

The Hoang-Ho is throughout the most of the year utterly 
unnavigable. But during the summer floods it rises to a great 
height, and is often so destructive that it has been called the 
■" Chinese Sorrow." The Yang-tse, though subject to great rises, 
is so calm and grand that it shows no disposition to demonstrate 
its power. Low dykes easily hold it to its bed. It feeds canals 
and irrigating ditches, bearing blessings instead of sorrow to the 
millions who are the denizens of the lands which stretch for 
hundreds of miles along its shores. The immediate river banks 
are so low that from the steamer's deck one can look over the 
dykes and study, not only the country, but, with a good glass, 
even the habits, homes, and industries of the people. Travelling 
by land here is so disagreeable to the foreigner, and subject to so 
many annoyances, not to say possible dangers, that few, except 
missionaries, attempt it, and these latter only after acquiring con- 
siderable knowledge of the language. Even then it is found that 
a Chinese costume, a shaven head, and a regulation queue, with 
the ability to sleep in filthy abodes, and to eat native, nasty food 
without a wry face, are almost indispensable. The Catholic mis- 
sionaries, barring the complexion, look thoroughly to the manner 
born. Like St. Paul, they are " all things to all men," and 
500,000 Chinese communicants attest the wisdom of their system. 
Not only do they pray, preach, and teach, but directly, or through 
their agents, do a large business, and have acquired to the Church 
large and valuable properties. The Zickaway institution, near 
Shanghai, belonging to the Society of Jesus, is a noble foundation. 
Possessing some of the finest instruments in the world, some of 
the brotherhood are devoted to science, and furnish to the gov- 
ernment meteorological observations and data; furnish meridional 
time to the mariner, and foretell storms and note their track and 



I04 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

nature. They are " Old Probs." to these people. They print, 
scientific, religious writings and newspapers, and quietly exercise^ 
a great influence. They are not, like most Protestant missionary 
societies, impatient of slow progress, and ever striving to show 
returns of souls snatched from the burning. They feel the Church 
to be eternal, and that sooner or later good returns will come.. 
They educate a heathen in useful branches and in mechanics, and 
do not try to knock salvation into him, but patiently work and 
pray, trusting that the educated soul will ultimately become an 
inquiring one. They have schools in which not only Christian,, 
but even pagan young men study and prepare themselves for the 
annual competitive examinations, without which no one can be a. 
candidate for official position in the empire. 

By the way, few people know in Christendom that there is 
no caste in China. The lowest as well as the highest can compete 
for all positions, and none, except in times of trouble, can reach 
them without first receiving a diploma from the board of literary 
examiners. These examinations are said to be so carefully 
guarded that favoritism is reduced to the minimum. Promotion 
is entirely according to rigid rules. But, unfortunately, the hold- 
ing and continuance in office is dependent wholly upon the will 
of the emperor, who is absolute and a master. All others acknowl- 
edge themselves as his slaves, and so call themselves when ad- 
dressing the throne. The emperor owns every foot of land in his 
dominions, and fixes taxes, rents, and imposts as he, from year to 
year, may deem fit — that is as nominally he deems fit, but in 
reality as the several governors of provinces so deem. His subjects 
obey without questioning his motive or wisdom, and are generally 
quiet and easily satisfied. Occasionally, however, they awake from 
their lethargy, and then are the most determined and dangerous 
rebels in the world. 

The Taiping rebellion, which lasted from 1851 to 1865, proved 
the persistence and ferocity of those people when once aroused. 
It ravaged more than half of the eighteen provinces. It ended 
only after having destroyed millions of people ; in fact, after 
depopulating the richest of the agricultural districts. I heard 
the numbers destroyed put at 10,000,000 to 15,000,000, but Mr, 
Hart, the very intelligent superintendent of the Methodist mis- 
sion on the Yang-tse, told me he thought the number was between 
20,000,000 and 50,000,000, not destroyed by being absolutely 
killed, though millions so came to their end, but by being starved 
or carried off by diseases which resulted from poverty and want, 
superinduced by the rebellion. He has been here 20 years, speaks 
the language fluently, and has travelled over nearly all of the 
revolted districts. Seeing no evidence of a very dense population 
along the Yang-tse, in fact, just the opposite, I asked him his 
opinion on this matter. He thought that' the population of 
China had been greatly over-estimated, and that there need be no 



CHINESE EDUCATION. 105 

anxiety in the outer world lest this land, being overcrowded, may be 
dangerous to other lands ; that it can support a greatly increased 
number of people. I should call the Yang-tse plains along the 
river rather sparsely peopled ; judging from what I saw in Japan, 
not half full. It is true, this was the line of the great rebellion, 
but that rebellion ended considerably over 20 years ago, and a 
Chinaman can erect a house nearly as quickly as an Arab can set 
his tent. 

But to return to Zickaway. The institution has a large orphan 
establishment. The little heathen look happy and well fed. We 
saw 150; some at play, others at work in the shops, where they 
learn good trades, while still others, swaying back and forth, were 
chanting their lessons. Every thing looked Chinese — Chinese 
tools, Chinese postures, and Chinese manners. As the good 
young father, who kindly showed us every thing, said, their aim 
is to make as few innovations upon fixed habits and ideas as they 
can consistently with the great ends and aims — Christianity and 
education. Thus they prepare their scholars to go into the 
Chinese world, to battle first for their bread, and afterwards for 
the right. The Protestant missionaries are awakening to the 
wisdom of the Romish system, and now one occasionally sees on 
the steamer one of the " interior missionaries " in the native part 
of the boat, in every thing, except the yellow skin, a thorough 
Chinaman. One of the good men — in answer to my assertion that 
a great mistake made by christianizers of pagan lands was that 
they persisted in preaching Christ crucified to a people enslaved 
by ignorance and superstition, when, even in our own enlightened 
country, more than 50 per cent, of the people were unwilling to 
bear the cross — sighed, and replied: " Yes ! but we can only live 
and work by the aid of the home churches, and they insist upon 
receiving, as a dividend, and seeing a balance sheet, showing souls 
saved." 

It took many hundred years to christianize Europe, and then 
it was a slow process until the rulers were themselves converted. 
Missionaries can do great good in these far-off countries. But 
their work can be made still more efificient by first making educa- 
tion the handmaid to and forerunner of religion. Teach the 
child to read and think, and when it becomes a man or woman it 
will see the folly of the old superstitions. The ground will then 
be prepared for the true seed. But these heathen find it hard to 
understand how our different sects so dispute with each other 
after 1,800 years of Christian rule. Buddhism amalgamated with 
the older superstitions and won ; and our Saviour himself says, 
He came to build up, not to destroy. 

Not being able to go among the farmers, I have been constantly 
on deck with the glass in my hand, and in going up and returning 
I have seen nearly every house and hamlet, town and city, along 
the shore, and much of it from close view. Looking upon the 



io6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

lowlands as they lie upon a level with the eye, they seem at first 
almost wooded, but on closer inspection the trees are found to be 
about the houses and hamlets and along the canals. The foliage 
of one tree appears to run into that of another, which may be far 
behind it. Canals or bayous run into the river every few miles. 
These intersect each other back in the country — so much so that 
the whole country for 1,200 or 1,300 miles north and south, and 
from 200 to 300 or more miles east and west, when not interrupted 
by the mountain ranges, is a perfect network of waterv/ays. The 
masts of junks are occasionally seen miles back over the tops of 
the low trees. The canals carry commerce and irrigating water. 
The banks of the rivers and of the artificial and natural canals are 
all dyked. Sometimes on the river the dykes run quite far back, 
100, 200, and even more feet from the banks. The land in front 
of them is overflowed from June to September or October. As 
soon as the water recedes this is sown in wheat, which will be har- 
vested in May, before the summer floods come down. It is sur- 
prising how wet the land is plowed. I have seen it worked when 
wet enough to make stiff mortar. This soil makes good sun- 
dried brick, yet seems friable after the crop is put in. The 
plowing is done with a single-handed plow, drawn by a buffalo or 
cow, generally the former, which are sturdy-looking brutes and 
very strong. When not working they graze, each in charge of a 
boy. Frequently they are seen lying in the edge of the river, 
with barely the head out, and do not get up when the wave from 
the boat goes quite over the head ; they simply lift the nose 
higher. The grain is generally sown broadcast, a little being 
drilled. About half of the fields now are up and green, and what 
speaks badly for the farmer, are very often being grazed by the 
buffalo and cows and by hogs, a thing never permitted by one of 
our good farmers. By the way, the buffalo is by no means like 
our wild bison ; it is the bubolo, or water-ox. 

The land is evidently cultivated in small holdings, narrow, long 
fields, as in Belgium and parts of Germany. One little field, 
however, so runs into another that on an island we saw many 
thousands of acres nearly all green, and to the naked eye looking 
like a single large farm. There are a great many low islands in 
the river, varying in size from loo to 200 acres up to a great 
many miles in length, most of them in cultivation. The farming 
does not strike me as being good. It may be better off the over- 
flowed land. But near Shanghai, where I rode several miles into 
the country, I was struck by the great inferiority of the Chinese 
farming to that of the Japanese. Every thing, except rice and 
vegetables, is broad-casted — even the cotton, — and cannot be 
worked as it is in the Land of the Rising Sun, where every thing 
is in drills, and thoroughly cultivated. The result is, these people 
raise no such crops as do the others. This judgment is not 
wholly drawn from what we saw from the steamers, but at cities 



CHINESE FARMING. 107 

I ascended elevations from which I could overlook and examine 
with my glass large areas of cultivated lands. Nor do the fields 
often make the bright landscape presented by the farms of Japan. 
There the varied crops, the great variety of root crops particular- 
ly, make the whole country look like the elaborate vegetable 
gardens about an English or American city. Here vegetables are 
grown in small truck patches, instead of being a regular farm 
product. 

I expected, from what I had read, to find that the farmers live 
in villages ; several travellers so stating positively. It is not so 
along this great valley. Farm-houses are abundant, not isolated 
as with us, in the middle of good-sized farms, but on the ridges — 
artificial generally, — and stand 50, 100, and sometimes several 
hundred yards apart. It is true little hamlets are often seen, where 
three or four farmers' houses are thrown around courts or farm- 
yards. Now and then a farm-house of hard brick with tile roof 
is seen. But most of them are of sun-dried brick or of light 
frame with reeds interwoven, and then mud-plastered — in other 
words, miserable huts or hovels designed simply for shelter, with 
no attempt whatever at any sort of ornamentation. The trees 
about them are evidently for shade, and not arranged to please 
the eye ; no flowers and no adjuncts for beauty. The same ill- 
cut and badly arranged thatched roof covers the dwelling-house, 
and continues over that part devoted to the buffalo and cow. 
The pig, the cow, the chickens, and the dog stand about the 
house door, where sit the women and the children, and before 
which, after sun-down, the man would be seen strutting with his 
hands locked behind him. The Chinese man, in city and on 
farm, delights to saunter in a sort of strut when his work is done. 
One sees this in cities only with the comparatively well-to-do 
merchant, for the cooly or the mechanic has no time to strut. His 
work is never done while it is light enough to do any thing. He 
works by day and by lamp-light. When not working he is eating, 
gambling, sleeping, or looking for a job. The farmers, however, 
saunter along the river bank. They are frequently alone, or with 
a little boy or two, never with their wives. These and the little 
girls rarely promenade with the lords of creation. A boy baby is 
a man's blessing ; a girl he despises, and leaves to be the compan- 
ion of the drudging mother. The farmer's domestic animal is as 
thoroughly domestic and a part of the family as the dog or cat. 
They do not eat cats and dogs in northern China. And here 
I will add, the people I have seen so far are good-sized, and a far 
superior lot to those who go to Arnerica. Our Celestial emigrants 
come from the Hong Kong district, speak a different dialect, 
or pronounce very differently from those in the northern half of 
the empire, and are very much despised by them. Though not 
knowing a word of Chinese, I can tell when I hear a man talk if he 
be from northern China or from Hong Kong. These latter are 



io8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

met with as sailors and waiters on the steamers, and are said to do 
better as servants and coolies than those from the north. 

The hogs are the scavengers of the cities, and up here are 
all black, have very long flap-ears, and a snout and face-front 
singularly wrinkled, utterly different from what is known as the 
China pig in our country. They are the demurest-looking brutes 
one can imagine. 

The farmers seem to be also fishermen. This is a vast business 
on the Yang-tse. For i,ooo miles a huge dip-net is to be seen 
every lOO or so yards on either bank. It is from 20 to 30 feet 
square, is attached to a long pole inserted in the banks, and lifted 
by pulleys. The fisherman invariably lifted his net as we passed, 
intending probably to have it up before the steamer's swell should 
drive the fish out. A large fish caught is taken out by a scoop- 
net. The smaller ones drop through a throat in the centre of the 
net into a bag, where they remain until the fisherman is ready to 
quit. Thousands of fishing boats are to be seen, and in swarms 
early in the morning and late in the evening ; some with dip-nets 
ingeniously rigged out at the stern and also lifted by the pulleys, 
others with drag nets. This muddy river is full of fish in great 
variety, and some of them of large size. In the spring vast quan- 
tities of " samlai," a species of shad, are caught. They are said 
to be fine. I have myself seen many varieties of fish, some very 
beautiful, and have eaten several kinds which are equal to any 
fresh-water fish I know. 

As with the Japanese, fish seems to be the flesh food of the 
average Chinese. Pork is his delight, but fish is his regular flesh 
diet. It is everywhere to be seen for sale, and is carried dried in 
great quantities to the far interior. It is very cheap, the very best 
costing only two or three cents a pound. Many singular modes 
of catching fish are practised. Boys and men dive down from the 
piers in the cities and bring up good-sized ones. They catch 
them in their hiding-places. But still more amusing is to see a 
boat go out, with a bamboo pole across its bow, having a dozen 
or so trained cormorants perched upon it. Reaching the fishing- 
grounds a cord is tied about a bird's neck, and he is sent down to 
fish. He rarely fails to bring one up. He cannot swallow it on 
account of the cord on his "guzzle," so he brings it to his master, 
who rewards him with a small fish, and sends down another. 
And so on till he fills his boat. Some of the birds are so trained 
that throttling is not necessary. This mode of fishing is used 
more on the small lakes or ponds, left when the river falls, than 
in the river itself. Vast numbers of such lakes are left when the 
floods go down, and these are simply alive with the finny tribes. 

I saw no evidence of dense population in the plain or valley, 
but quite the contrary. All of this alluvial country is of great 
fertility, and it is apparent that the hills have many of them at 
some time or other been considerably terraced. Now the plains 



CHR YSANTHEMUMS. 1 09 

are not a third full, and the mountains, as far as I could see back 
among them, furnish but little support for man. They are barren 
of trees, and look almost as brown as the ranges of Nevada, and 
remind me, in some localities, very much of them. Now and 
then one sees trees about temples perched high up, and a few 
sparsely scattered along the gorges and crests of lofty hills, thus 
showing that they could grow in forests if properly protected. 
But these people suffer greatly during the cold winters, which are 
not infrequent. Their houses are miserable hovels with no chim- 
neys, and their clothing is composed entirely of cotton stuff. 
They not only cut the young trees and shrubs, but actually grub 
up the roots for fuel. Straw, cotton stalks, bushes, bulrushes, and 
the leaves of the trees are gathered and baled for winter use. On 
some of the overflowed lands, too wet for wheat, a sort of coarse, 
reedy rush grows in great luxuriance, and to a height of 10 to 15 
feet. This is now all being cut, and is used for mats, screens, and 
for the woven sides of hovels. We saw women raking up the 
leaves of these rushes, and carefully tying them into bundles for 
fuel. It is now nearly the middle of November, and yet many of 
the vegetable crops in the truck patches about the farm-houses 
are but half matured. A frost to hurt does not come until about 
Christmas, but after that there is weather cold enough to form 
considerable ice. It is said, however, that, as in Japan, the frost 
does not kill, as with us in America. 

After returning to Shanghai I paid a farewell visit to the public 
garden to get one more look at the chrysanthemums, which are 
now in full bloom. We in America have no conception of the 
beauty of this flower when perfected. I measured one flower, a 
perfect ball, every petal placed just where it should be, and as 
white nearly as snow, and found it was 20 inches around, 
without stretching out its petals, when measured horizontally, 
and 18 inches measured vertically. Spreading its petals out 
it was over eight inches in diameter. On one little plat, three 
feet by eight, I counted 42 perfect flowers, from four to seven 
inches in diameter. One smaller variety resembled a beauti- 
fully formed aster. I had to examine the leaf before I could 
satisfy myself that it was not of that family. Another was the 
size, form, and compactness of a fine dahlia. There are many 
varieties, some fringed, some quilled, and some compact, with 
petals resembling a mass of bent gourd seed These latter are as 
solid and compact as a ball of candied pop-corn. To see this col- 
lection is worth a long voyage. 

I am now finishing this letter on board the Kut Sang, a few 
miles south of Amoy, on the Eastern Sea of China. We have 
passed a great many bold mountain islands. They resemble the 
mountain ridges lying from 100 to 350 miles west of Shanghai, 
and suggest the idea that those were once out in the ocean, and 
that the Yang-tse-Kiang has filled a part of the sea and left the 



no A RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

mountains as islands in the plain. The enormous wash from the 
Hoang-Ho and Yang-tse-Kiang is said to be filling the sea very 
rapidly. 

Last night we witnessed an extraordinary exhibition of phos- 
phorescent lights. The ofificers of the ship say they have 
never seen it surpassed, and hope not to see it often repeated, for 
it made the surface of the sea so light and so dazzling that 
though the stars were out yet the sky seemed intensely black, 
and some island headlands, which ought to have been landmarks 
to navigate by, were not visible. There was a brisk, monsoon 
wind coming down from the north, covering the sea with white- 
caps. These were all aflame, and as they rose and fell, resembled 
a wild dance of fairies robed in light. Here and there a wave 
would lift higher than the rest, and would whirl and pirouette in 
mad glee. The horizon looked like a thin band of pale electric 
light, as if made by an arc burner reflected upon gauze. At 
times the whole sea was ablaze, and one could almost feel certain 
of seeing gentle lightning flashes from above when the blaze 
would die out, and there seemed to be millions of twinkling stars 
darting about in the dark waters. At times for a mile or so there 
would be no great mass of light near us, but only these twinkling 
ones, or the flaming foam made by the prow of the ship catching 
and rolling it back. The ship was lying apparently in a blazing 
pool, not much larger than itself, which moved along with us and 
carried us along, instead of our moving in it. Where the screw 
churned the sea under the stern, the mass seemed to be a cold, 
molten metal, so bright that it cast a shadow. I held my watch 
over it. The face shone bright enough to enable me to see the 
hands and read the dial. It was a fascinating scene, and with 
regret I turned in considerably after midnight. I have often 
watched these displays on the Atlantic, and thought them fine, 
but compared with this they were as flashings from fireflies. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CHINESE CITIES, HOUSES, TEMPLES, AND WORKSHOPS — CAT AND 

DOG ROASTS — FLOATING POPULATION OF CANTON — 

FLOWER BOATS — WOMEN BOATMEN — SUSAN. 

Steamship ^^ Mongkut," November 24, 1887. 

It is now high twelve, and Captain Anderson has just an- 
nounced that we are in latitude 8° 29' north, longitude 104° 38' 
east. We sailed from Hong Kong the 20th at 4.30 P.M. for 
Bangkok. We are out of the China Sea, and have entered into 
the Gulf of Siam. We have been upon a pale yellow, pea-green 
sea all day. It will get blue later. It is shoaly all about Cape 
Cambodia and for a long distance out. Yesterday we looked 
down upon a sea of emerald, broken into light, feathery, pros- 
trate, foamy plumes ; the day before we seemed to be plowing 
through a vat of indigo dye, so deeply blue was the world of 
waters about us. 

When we weighed anchor at Hong Kong, Johnny, Willie, and 
I lay down upon easy-chairs on the quarter-deck to enjoy a genu- 
ine rest. The air was deliciously balmy. We were the only 
passengers, as we also were from Kobe to Shanghai and from 
Shanghai to Swatow and Hong Kong, and could feel the ship 
was our own. About us was the busy harbor, with its 24 steam- 
ers, its many sailing ships and junks, and its hundreds of sam- 
pans, crossing each other's tracks in every direction, like flies 
in a summer room. The beautiful harbor, from a mile to two 
and a half miles wide, lay land-locked by lofty heights in every 
direction, and resembled a crooked lake in a mountain land. To 
the north, upon the water's edge, were pretty, white buildings, 
hospitals, dry docks, and their necessary houses, and at farther 
points dingy-looking Chinese villages ; to the south, stretching 
along the inner cord of a crescent for two or three miles, near 
the centre, were the three-story hongs or merchant houses, with 
factories and manufactories toward either end of the bow. Tier 
after tier, one behind the other, came houses piled one upon 
the other, on long, bending terraces, climbing 400, 500, and 
600 feet upon the steep mountain sides. AH buildings, 
except the churches and factories, were fronted and flanked 
by deep colonnades and verandas for each story. Here and 
there, more ambitious than the mass, isolated bungalows 



112 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

mount above the regular terraces, and are nestled down in the dark 
green of tropical trees and shrubbery. Everywhere, except on 
the water front, and for one or two streets back, long lines of fine 
trees in glossy dark green mark the windings of the terraced 
roadways. High overhead, nearly 2,000 feet above us, lifted 
Victoria Peak with its lookout tower. About its summit, 
and for a few hundred feet below, and along the crest of the ad- 
joining mountain, 100 feet perhaps lower than the peak, 
were bright, white colonnaded bungalow houses, the homes dur- 
ing the summer of the wealthy Hong Kongese and the summer 
palace of the colonial governor. Between these upper clusters 
of houses and those climbing the heights below, for 1,000* or 
more feet, lay the steep mountain sides partially planted in young 
pine, but generally wearing the brownish green of autumnal 
grass. Across this intermediate steep slope ran zigzag beauti- 
fully engineered roads, white among the shrubs, climbing in 
different directions the loftiest heights, while crossing them from 
the western end of the town, by an easy and gradual rise, ran the 
beautiful viaduct road, it being also an aqueduct over bridges and 
arched ways, sometimes consisting of 20 odd lofty arches. To the 
west the sun was rapidly seeking its couch in a flood of yellow-red 
light. 

We steamed around the picturesque island, once famous as the 
birthplace of the deadly Hong Kong fever, but now having as 
low a death-rate as most European cities, and lower than any, if 
only the foreign population be counted. They, however, go off, 
I suspect, to their far-off homes when disease sets its stamp upon 
them. They certainly ought to die fast, all of these Europeans 
in the East ; they eat too much and far too often, and drink like 
fish. I do not think any of them have any bowels of compassion 
for the natives, but every one is thoroughly conscious of having a 
liver. I may be rather hard upon them as to their lack of feeling 
for the natives, but if so it is their own fault. They certainly 
rarely speak of them with half as much kindness as they do of 
their ponies (when they have any). For example : the steamer 
which followed us to Canton was burned up, and 400 to 600 
Chinese passengers were burned or drowned. Several times 
this disaster was the subject of conversation among Europeans in 
my presence. They always spoke with great satisfaction of the 
foreign officers being all saved, and passed by the other terrible 
loss with a shrug of the shoulders, and some remark, such as, 
"There 's plenty more to fill their places." It is said the present 
healthiness of Victoria or Hong Kong is owing to the island 
having been so well planted in young pines, etc. 

I can, by the way, hardly help but shudder when I think of this 
burning steamer. We went from Hong Kong to Canton by the 
morning boat. While at breakfast, just before starting from our 
hotel, a friend who had reached the place some days before us, 



THE POLOOBl ISLANDS. 113 

joined us at table and advised us to take the evening boat, and 
thereby save a day and not lose any scenery. We would prob- 
ably have taken his advice but for the fact that when we went 
from the breakfast-room our luggage was already down, and our 
room assigned to others. This little thing alone kept us off the 
evening boat, which burned, and with it from 500 to 600 passen- 
gers. This was our only narrow escape up to date. 

Just at nightfall we passed the Ladrone Islands. I well re- 
member, when I used to read the " Pirates ' Own Book " and other 
kindred works, these names were always connected in my mind 
with the homes of the human sharks of the sea. 

The 2 1st and 22d our little ship of only 800 tons rolled 
heavily and rocked in the cradle of the deep. The northeast 
monsoon, which commenced its steady course nearly two months 
ago, brought down heavy seas upon our quarter, nearly upon our 
beam, so that we rolled and heaved in the deep sea-trough very 
badly. We lashed easy-chairs upon the centre line of the quar- 
ter-deck, and to a considerable extent passed a pleasant time. 
We lay all day drinking in the balmy tropical air, watching the 
deep sea, as blue as a mighty vat of indigo dye, and building cas- 
tles in the light, fleecy, cumuli clouds piled up all around us. 
Yesterday we bent more to the westward, throwing the seas di- 
rectly aft, and the ship only swayed gently, but I could hardly 
force myself to write. It was so pleasant to lie on deck and 
dream and dream. To our right were the high, broken, brown 
ranges of Cochin China. Far to the west stretched the bound- 
less ocean, for the Philippine Islands are hundreds of miles away ; 
beyond them is the mighty, surging Pacific, washing the far-off 
shores of our native land, and beyond them were those we loved 
so dearly. We have steamed among hundreds of Chinese fishing- 
boats. AH of these and all junks are unpainted, but have on each 
bow-quarter a great flaring eye painted in bright color. I asked a 
Chinaman why this was universal: " Him no have eye, how him 
can see?" was the reply in pigeon English. 

Two hours ago we passed Poloobi — Potato — Islands, south of 
Cambodia mainland, three pretty, dome-shaped pieces of land, 
the largest probably one to two miles in circumference, and 400 to 
500 feet high ; the next, not a third as large and lower ; the third, a 
few hundred feet in circumference. We ran quite under them 
and admired their dense tropical forests, all covered with hard 
wood of many varieties, but to me unfamiliar. The thermometer 
is 82 ° in the shade, pretty warm for the last of November. 

But I must write of the Chinese and their cities. We have not 
been long among them, only a few weeks, but every day and 
evening were spent in work. The neighborhood of the almond- 
eyed Celestial neither suggests nor invites idle enjoyment. On 
the steamers we were constantly on deck, watching the country 
we were passing, watching the mass of Chinese passengers stored 



114 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

between and upon decks (going up to Canton we had 2,500 
packed like pigs in a car), or collating facts and digesting ideas. 
We have visited and somewhat closely studied old Shanghai, 
Chin-Kiang, Wuhu, Kieu-Kiang, and Hankow, all large, walled 
cities in the Yang-tse valley; Swatow, on the seacoast, 180 miles 
north of Hong Kong ; and Canton, the largest and finest of 
Chinese cities. These are all purely Chinese. We were in the 
outskirts of several other walled towns, and thoroughly explored 
New Shanghai, with its 150,000 inhabitants or more, and Vic- 
toria (Hong Kong) with 140,000 native population. These sev- 
eral cities are scattered over a wide extent of country, Canton 
being 900 and odd miles by water, and nearly 700 as the crow 
flies south-west from Shanghai, and Hankow 600 to 800 miles 
from each of the others. 

The dialects spoken, north and south, are so different, one from 
the other, that I saw in a court of justice in Canton an interpreter 
used to convey to the magistrate the answers of the prisoners, 
who were north Chinamen. I was told the words and construc- 
tion of all dialects, of which there are many, are practically the 
same, but the pronunciations are so varied that, to all intents and 
purposes, there are several languages spoken in the empire. In 
spite of all this, as far as I could see, the people are thoroughly 
homogeneous, the same in thought, in manners, in customs, and 
habits. All are industrious — their industry plodding almost ani- 
mal in its patient steadiness. Acuteness and cunning seem more 
evinced among those of the south than among their brethren 
of the north, superinduced, I doubt not, by their earlier and 
longer intercourse with foreigners, who had and yet have little 
feeling in common with the natives. They came to the East 
as their congeners went to the West, in quest of gold and 
fortunes, and left their rules of ethics far-off in their Christian 
homes, as likely to be incumbrances when dealing with pagans 
and those they choose to call barbarians. I do not want any 
Chinese in America, because I wish ours to be a homogeneous 
people, and amalgamation of the almond-eyed sons of another 
progenitor than Adam can produce only hybrids with our Cau- 
casian races. I am not one of those who feel that America is 
to be or should be the harbor of refuge for all lands and all 
peoples. It should be the home of those, and only those, who 
can become Americans in every sense of the word. This the 
Chinaman cannot do, and I would therefore say to him : " You 
may come among us for pleasure or for information, but you 
cannot work on a soil you do not consider good enough for 
your dead bones." 

The foreigner, European and American, comes to China to 
make money to carry back with him. He, too, wants his dead 
body to lie in the graveyards of his native land. Coming 
thus, feeling thus, he is too utterly lacking in those feelings 



INFIDELITY AMONG FOREIGNERS. 115 

and kindly sympathies which 1800 years of Christian teachings 
should have planted in his breast. By the way, I have been 
struck by the open expressions of absolute infidelity uttered 
by so many foreigners here. Many seem proud of the ability 
to say : " I am no Christian ; I don't believe in Christianity." 
One hears sneers uttered about the missionaries everywhere, 
and no joke is told with more gusto than the one about the 
good man in Japan, who reported home that, " The few bricks 
left after building the temple of the Lord we used in erecting 
a little house for ourselves." The temple, they say, was a 
miserable little pretence of a church, while the dwelling-house 
was a commodious and comfortable building. They delight to 
point out the charming gardens and comfortable houses of the 
missionaries in some localities, particularly in Japan, and pass 
over in silence the work of many good men and women who are 
sundering their home affections, in their desire to teach the ways 
of God to man. These good people have to be fed and housed. 
It has been a long while since the Lord actually fed the young 
ravens, human or feathered. 

The north Chinaman is larger and more muscular than those of 
the south, but less quick and active. Both are creatures of habit, 
and it is difficult to make them recognize the necessity for im- 
provements of any sort. But when innovations are inaugurated 
they quickly take advantage of them for their own profit. They 
will never seek progress, as do the bright and hopeful Japanese. 
Progress must be forced upon them. They are born, grow up, 
eat, live, die, and are buried, as their forefathers have done before 
them for countless generations, and count it unfilial and irreverent 
to wish or to imagine that the ways of their canonized progenitors 
may be or can be improved upon. The dead father becomes the 
son's household god, and he chooses from among his forefathers 
him who is to fill the niche in his domestic shrine. 

They work like ants — not like bees buzzing and humming as 
the Japanese do, — but like the plodding, patient, never-to-be-dis- 
couraged ant, and as quickly as their work is finished, can lie 
down and sleep like animals. And like animals, too, can get as 
much rest, stolen in little cat-naps, as from the same amount ob- 
tained in a steady doze. They have no conception of the con- 
gruous, and none of their senses seem ever to be shocked or even 
incommoded by the most absolute incongruity. They can eat 
and enjoy a meal while their eyes are resting upon objects which 
ought to be most offensive, or their nostrils are filled with disgust- 
ing stenches. They can spread their table over an open cesspool, 
and there enjoy their most desired delicacies, and can sleep 
sweetly with the breezes wafted to their couches from carrion. 
They lay the coffins containing their loved and honored dead by 
the dusty roadway in an open field browsed over by buffalo, or 
on a rocky hill to swelter uncovered for months, and pay large 



ii6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

sums for a spot all uncanny, because the crafty priest has made 
them believe it to be a lucky spot. It is strange how crafty men 
become who assume holy robes, and how the believer can be so 
blind to the craft. 

One sees frequently a shop beautifully decorated with screens, 
and hanging friezes of finely carved woods of trees, trailing vines 
and flowers painted in imitation of nature, with pretty birds 
of gaudy plumage among the branches ; with hangings of exquis- 
ite embroidery in gold and brilliant silks ; with a shrine in the 
rear richly carved and bright in lacquer, gold, and enamel, holding 
the household god, clothed in gold and garments of richest dyes, 
while a part of the walls are bare and dingy with dirt ; the shops 
opening wide upon a narrow, dirty street, with next door a cook- 
shop smoking, or a fish-monger with his walls hanging in nasty 
dried fish. The rich merchant has no idea of the incongruity in 
his surroundings, or that his lavish expenditures are thereby made 
in bad taste. 

A gentleman in control in one of the concessions — i. e., locali- 
ties set apart for foreigners, and entirely governed by them under 
laws administered by the respective consuls — told me of a native 
who had fitted up very elaborately and at considerable expense a 
shop next to a corner, used for not very odorous purposes. As a 
reward to the native for fitting up his shop so expensively, he 
ordered a rail put across the corner to prevent its disagreeable use. 
To his surprise the shopkeeper complained of the fence, saying 
the old use brought people, and thereby gave him customers. 
In Hankow, Kieu-Kiang, and Swatow hogs abound in the streets. 
They are the scavengers. I have seen men in shops gathered 
around their little tables, taking their noonday meal, while a sow 
and pigs were walking among them to pick up any thing they 
might throw away. In one of these places, under the counter of 
a sort of notion store, I saw a sow with a large litter of two-day- 
old pigs. Pigs, dogs, and chickens are thick in the streets, and 
have free ingress into the shops, and seem to cause no annoyance 
so long as they do not actually get in the way. 

Travellers all speak and write of the filth and horrible smells of 
Chinese cities. It is the fashion so to do, and as the majority of 
writers simply copy what some one else has written, only guard- 
ing to use altered modes of expression, no one seems to take the 
trouble to examine for himself. Early in this century a crazy 
Englishman sang of the hundred stenches of Cologne, and every 
scribbler since has to write of them, until now these bad odors 
number a thousand. Thus it is with Chinese cities. Some young 
Englishman told us to get smelling-bottles before we went within 
the walls of old Shanghai. We spent hours in the old city. We 
walked through nearly all of its streets — not carried in chairs, as 
nearly all travellers are. We did not find sweet odors very abun- 
dant, except when passing a shop where fresh wood was being 



CHINESE STREETS. 117 

worked into coffins or pails and tubs ; nor did we find any thing 
so offensive as to make our walk disagreeable — nothing as bad as 
I have often found in a hotel in continental Europe, or on the old, 
narrow streets of London. We spoke of this to travellers, who 
said : " Yes, old Shanghai has learned neatness from its new 
European-governed neighbor. Wait till you see some of the 
other cities, especially Canton, then you will catch it." We went 
through other cities. We found narrow streets, six to twelve feet 
wide — eight about the average. Most of them are covered with 
bamboo matting, and all are densely filled with people. The 
shops are all wide open to the streets, — no doors, — each shop 
rather a recess running back from the street, with a counter 
covering a third of the store front. All kinds of work are done 
in open view : shops of embroidery and silks ; shops with fish of 
every size and kind ; shops of all sorts of groceries in baskets on 
the floors and counters and hanging to the walls ; blacksmith 
shops, in which half-naked men sit hammering before their fur- 
naces ; shops, in which coffins are made ; crowds buying and 
eating in and before the cook-shops; masses going to and fro, 
some in chairs ; men with heavy loads swinging from the end of 
a strong bamboo balanced on the shoulder ; carriers of water in 
pails, now and then a splash dropping near one's feet ; carriers of 
garden vegetables; carriers of night soil in open pails, giving one 
a whiff not very agreeable — these latter, however, were rare, 
except in the early morning ; pigs demure as saints grunting 
along ; often the streets so packed that all had to keep step ; 
peddlers crying their wares ; carriers crying for pedestrians to 
make way, and all making way good-humoredly ; now a big 
porker squealing, as he swung from a pole carried between two 
men ; dogs barking at us foreigners, and then yelping as a native 
would give them a kick for their lack of hospitality. We did not 
find the air as sweet as if we were in the broad streets of the con- 
cessions, but we found nothing more than momentarily disagree- 
able ; nothing to prevent our hearty enjoyment of the novelty of 
our surroundings. We then looked forward with a sort of long- 
ing to get into filthy, unfriendly Canton. There we were to get 
the breadth and depth of Chinese nastiness. There we were to be 
constantly insulted, and to have stones or clods thrown at us. 

We went to Canton. We spent three days walking through its 
densely packed, narrow streets. We found it to be the cleanest 
city we had seen in China. We told our guide to take us to the 
nasty streets. We wanted to see something very filthy. Ah 
Cum replied: "Belly well, I take you where poor people live." 
We went. We walked through the old walled city of 1,000 years 
and the new city only 400 years old. We walked everywhere, 
among the wealthiest and among the poorest ; through the fine 
streets lined with handsome shops, and through those occupied by 
the poverty-stricken ; for three days we walked from early morning 



ii8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

to dark. We met some foreigners in chairs. The cunning guide 
made them think walking nearly impossible — thus he, too, rides 
and gets a commisssion from the chair-owners. Footsore, on the 
evening of the third day, we went on the steamer for Hong Kong, 
without having found any thing really disagreeable, and without 
having received any other than courteous, treatment from the 
people, except from some idle boys at Honan temple, who take 
pleasure in calling the tourist a " fanquoi " (a foreign devil), and 
then running, just as a lot of boys with us would call a Chinaman 
" pig-tail." Everywhere we showed our curiosity by looking at and 
examining every kind of industry. We did this in each city we 
visited, but more in Canton than anywhere else. We frequently 
stopped men at their work. We really incommoded them, until 
more than once I was ashamed of myself. In every instance they 
seemed amused at our curiosity, and, I thought, surprised that 
we should evince ignorance at their modes, which, I doubt not, 
they think the only ones ; but not once were we repulsed ; not 
once was the slightest unwillingness shown to our seeing. 

I had been led to expect possible injury in going through these 
cities. I would now feel no hesitation in walking alone through 
any Chinese city, if I only knew the language enough to make 
known my wants and explain my curiosity. I made "Ah Cum" 
explain to them the difference between their ways of doing some 
things, and ours. They were quite curious to learn, and seemed 
to think me lying when I told them the quantity we sometimes 
turned out. We went into the big mill of the city. There were 
twelve stones. The upper stone is turned upon the nether by a 
sweep drawn by a blindfolded ox going round and round in a 
narrow circle, his track not more than four feet from the edge of 
the stone, the flour dropping on a narrow rim around it. There 
are three relays of oxen, or about 36 to the mill. I told the 
owner how we made flour, and when I named the number of 
barrels turned out each day at one mill at Minneapolis, I regretted 
having done so. He set me down as a fearful liar. 

Cofifins are a decidedly prominent article of manufacture in all 
the cities. They take a stick of timber, round in its natural 
form, and, say, ten inches in diameter. This is ripped into two 
pieces. The flat surface is then scooped out, the piece straight- 
edged, and a shorter section of a like stick is mortised into two 
ends. A bottom and a top are then scooped from sticks, a couple 
or three inches wider than the sides. The sides, ends, and bottom, 
are then put together with a cement varnish. When finished, 
the two ends show that the sides, top and bottom, are about 
three inches thick in the centre, and rounded to an inch or two at 
the edges. The whole is then covered, for a well-to-do man, with 
cloth more or less rich ; for the poor man, with simple cotton. 
Different kinds of wood are used : cheap cofifins of common pine, 
costly ones from wood brought from far-off in the mountains, 



I 



A CANTON SHOP. 119 

supposed to be impervious to water. Some of these cost $1,000. 
A Chinaman can offer no such evidence of piety as in giving his 
father or mother a costly cofifin. The coffin, with some quick- 
Hme about the corpse, is then not necessarily buried beneath the 
ground, but laid on top — I suspect sometimes to show its fine- 
ness. It thus lies for weeks, months, or even years. It costs 
something to erect a mound over it. A man may leave money 
enough for a coffin, but not sufficient to put him well under the 
sod, so he lies on the surface until his family or friends can afford 
to put him under. The first care of a man is to lay by enough 
for a decent burial. Mourning by widow or daughter is by 
wearing white, not black garments. A man abstains from shav- 
ing his head a certain number of months, more or less, according 
as he mourns for father or mother. I could not learn that he 
mourns at all for a wife. He abstains in mourning from sleeping 
on a bed, and wears common cotton garments for a certain num- 
ber of months, and denies himself certain luxuries of diet. A 
wealthy man we met aboard the steamer from Canton was very 
careful to tell us he was mourning for his mother, thereby ex- 
plaining the cheapness of his apparel and the lack of luxury in 
his supper. To the initiated his dress would have rendered his 
apology unnecessary. These rules are very exacting. 

I will endeavor to describe a Canton shop or store. It is a 
type of all we saw in other cities, only that in the north, where 
it is colder, the ceiling is lower. Such house, of the purely 
Chinese style, not those occupied by them in cities more or less 
Europeanized, is from 10 to 18 feet wide — a few may be wider — - 
and from 30 to 40 feet deep, with a steep, common, pitched 
roof, the eaves to the street. The ridge of the roof is from 
20 to 30 feet high. There is strictly no second story. The light 
comes in through windows in the roof, which is invariably, in the 
large cities, of rounded tile. The street, where there are fine shops, 
is more or less covered with matting; much of the light, there- 
fore, going from the house to the street, instead of from the street 
to the house. Around and within this front house is generally 
a gallery used for goods. The gallery answers to the second 
story of our houses, and perhaps is so considered. Other houses 
come behind the front one, and more or less opening into it. These 
all have galleries wider than the one in front, and thereby much 
light is excluded from them. The sidewall of the house is com- 
mon to the next house, or stands against it. Usually the wall is 
a party wall between the two. Sometimes these houses or, rather, 
parts of houses are three deep, each one meeting the next with 
its eaves, and forming a trough between the two. The conduc- 
tors of the inner roofs run down within the house. The ground- 
floor is of brick or tile, and only one or two bricks higher than 
the street. Some of the front shops are very richly decorated 
with brilliant shrines holding the household god or gods, and all 



I20 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

rather tawdry, somewhat in the style of our gaudy, gilded theaters.. 
Being lighted from above, the effect is very pretty. All houses, 
by the way, in Canton, are of brick. In Swatow the majority 
seem to have concrete walls. These latter, about the doorway, 
are prettily painted al fresco, and almost immediately after the 
last coat of mortar is put on. Some painters seemed much 
pleased at our watching them work, and evidently put in their 
best touches. Some of the scenes painted were really artistic — 
artistic in Chinese style. As far as I could discover the dis- 
tances between street and street were about 200 feet, the 
houses, or, rather, sets of houses on one street backing against the 
rear wall of those on the next street. The dividing walls of the 
two or three houses standing one behind the other are often so 
opened as to make one continuous shop. The mill I mentioned 
ran from street to street, but was under 20 feet wide. In northern 
cities I noticed no lofty stores as in Canton. There the first 
story was rarely over 10 to 15 feet high, and usually when 
there was as much as 15 feet there were two real stories. 

Many modes of work were to me very novel. Razors and fine 
knives are all cut by hand with a hand chisel. A fine stone lies 
before the mechanic, and every few minutes the cutler sharpens 
his chisel. Ordinary cutting implements are only hammered out. 
When filing any thing to a smooth and even surface, the file is 
worked in one hand and the thing filed is held in the other, in- 
stead of being laid on a bench. The file has at the small end a 
wooden continuation, which runs back and forth in a ring, 
thereby keeping it level and regular in its motions. AH timber 
is sewed into boards by hand in the shop using the boards. 
There are evidently no saw-mills. I could hear of no great rice 
mills. The rice is hulled by being placed in a mortar and beaten 
by a maul at the end of a lever, lifted by a man stepping upon 
the short end, and thus lifting the maul, which then falls when he 
steps off and beats out the rice by its own weight. It is a lively 
sight to see double rows of these pounders, 10, 20, and at one 
place 40 or 50, all worked by athletic naked men, one to each 
mortar, usually moving so that a given number of mauls would 
fall at a time, thereby thumping in regular musical intervals. 

The manner of mangling and glazing cotton nankin is very 
droll. The stuff, after coming from the dye-vat and being dried, 
is slightly dampened by a man spewing upon it from his mouth 
a delicate spray of water. I could not make one of them smile 
enough to loose his pucker. He would send the spray out as 
fine, almost, as the particles of fog, and as evenly over the goods 
as one could conceive, folding the stuff as he sprayed it. He 
would then laugh as much as we. The goods is then laid before 
a man who, with his feet, "manipulates" (excuse the bull) a 
stone, weighing several hundred pounds, three or four feet 
long, two feet deep, and ten inches thick, with a convex curve on 



DOGS AND CATS AS FOOD. 121 

the base, about two feet long. The top of the stone is scooped 
out and the ends cut down to take off weight. The manipulator 
rolls some of the stuff around a wooden roller, three inches in 
diameter, and places it in a smooth wooden trough, hollowed so 
as to have a concave, a yard wide. By a quick motion of the foot 
the stone is thrown on the top of the roller, and rapidly worked 
back and forth, rolling the roller in the trough, the man all the 
while, as does the rice-mauler, sustaining himself by a sort of 
trapeze bar above. In an incredibly short time, by a motion of 
his feet he tips off the stone, and the stuff is drawn off perfectly 
ironed and glazed. When one of our fair ladies touches to her 
cheek a beautiful piece of glazed nankin, let her remember the 
delicate spray which dampened it for mangling. 

The process of drilling holes through pearls and small coral 
beads is pretty. The pearl or bead is dropped into a little pit 
barely large enough to hold it. Then, with a drill as fine as 
a cambric needle, worked by a silk thread on a short bow, the 
hole is cut through in less than a minute. Beads are counted by 
being passed over a sort of wooden platter with 1,000 holes just 
large enough to catch them ; each hole catches one, the remainder 
are rolled off, and if a hole or a few holes are discovered to be 
empty, enough are counted to supply the deficiency, and the 
whole is then tipped into a box. A thousand are thus counted 
in a half minute or so. Wood and ivory carving were also in- 
teresting features of Canton, and I was sorely tempted to invest, 
but we were yet far from half-way around the world, and I had to 
forego. 

Cook-shops abound in all Chinese cities, and hanging in and 
before them were many delicacies tempting to the Chinese palate : 
whole-roasted pigs, fowl, hares, game, etc. The pig's jowl is 
cleaved vertically, and then the whole animal is spread so as to 
exhibit the porker in his entirety — that, too, when weighing 100 
and more pounds. Ducks and game have the head and feet, and 
sometimes the tail-feathers or hair are stuck in or pulled over the 
tail-bone. In the cat and dog cook-shops the claws and feet are 
all left on. By the way, a fat young puppy makes a beautiful 
roast. The cat looks like a huge squirrel. These are only eaten 
in Canton, as far as I could learn, and I am led to believe it true ; 
for in every other city the dogs were a nuisance and have a mortal 
hatred of a foreigner. They would discover us by scent before 
we could be seen, and would commence barking furiously and 
seemed desirous of testing our flavor. But, like all wolf-dogs, 
they are great cowards, and nearly all Chinese dogs have the 
Siberian or coyote characteristics. In Canton we were barked at 
by only one dog, and he got a furious kick from a native. I 
have a suspicion that the curs know they are good for the dish 
as well as for the bark, and are very well behaved. I could meet 
no Chinaman who confessed to eating cats and dogs. All said 



122 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

they were only cooly food, but I found they cost more than that 
of a like quantity of pork. I therefore have a suspicion that 
others eat them, but on the sly, and why not? It is not the 
mangy cur and starveling cat that are eaten. They are fattened be- 
fore killing, and all we saw roasted were appetizing in appearance. 
They are only offered at special markets, and prepared at special 
cook-shops. At one of these I saw a number of coolies eating 
from a large bowl of stew. I suspected the leaner curs and purr- 
ers were stewed, and not roasted, and were cheap. 

About nine in the morning, and again about one P.M., the people 
seemed to be eating their meals. In all shops the employees eat 
in the place ; the meal furnished, we were informed, by the master. 
Each man had his small bowl, which he filled from the rice-tub, 
and then, each would, with his chop-sticks, pick out pieces of 
fish, flesh, or vegetables, from a large bowl of stew common to 
them all, and around which they all squatted. The dexterity 
with which they can pick up a thing, even a grain of rice, with 
the chop-sticks is very remarkable. They can use them much 
more deftly than we can the fork. The rice from the small bowl 
is thrown by a sort of jerky motion into the mouth, to which the 
bowl is brought. They eat a kind of macaroni, or rather vermi- 
celli, which seemed absolutely to run into the mouth as if it were 
alive, and one piece following another so continuously as to seem 
a single long string. In eating, the bowl is lifted close to the 
mouth. This is done among all chop-stick people. 

Embroidery is done by men rather more than by women, the 
soft Chinese hand being admirably fitted for delicate work. The 
hand of every Chinaman, not absolutely occupied in very hard 
labor, is as soft as a new kid glove. The designer draws off the 
figures with a sort of pencil, without any model, and apparently 
without any preconceived design. The thing comes out, however, 
curiously harmonious. I admit it to be purely Chinese harmony. 
Chin-aware is painted in the same way. Each piece is done 
separately, and rapidly, yet a man will design and paint dozens 
of pieces all alike, yet each in some small detail diiTering from 
the other. If you will examine any of your real china-ware you 
will notice this peculiarity. The same will be observed in their 
embroidery. The white crape shawls were very rich and artistic, 
and were a sore temptation to me, and the paintings on rice- 
paper are grotesque, but very pretty and of exquisite coloring. 

We visited the place of execution. There was one head in a 
basket, cut off some weeks before, and around were many copper 
pots, nearly three feet in diameter, filled with heads, and cemented 
down. The body is buried, but the state holds on to the head. 
For ten cents the executioner showed the sword, and solemnly 
went through the motions of taking off a caput. He said he had 
cut off a good many hundreds, but admitted he would have 
to strike hard to sever my neck with a single blow, but would try 



TEMPLES AND PAGODAS. 123 

it if desired, and looked as if he would do it most good-naturedly ; 
that the Chinese neck was smaller, and he rarely had to strike 
twice. Executioners have much practice. Six thousand heads 
are annually taken off in China. The sword was about two feet 
long in blade, and not over two or two and one half inches wide. 
By the way, these people have very small necks. It is a little 
singular that the execution ground is used for drying earthen- 
ware for the kiln. When did this idea commence? Potter's Field 
is almost synonymous with the burial-place of the destitute. 

The temples of China are far from interesting, and greatly 
inferior to those of Japan. Indeed, except to note the lack of 
interest, they are not worth visiting. The three great temples of 
Canton are those of Honan, a large Buddhist temple, with its 
many acres of ground, and its trees trained to represent men, ani- 
mals, and birds, its great fat, sacred pigs, and the three large 
statues of Buddha; the temple of Five Hundred Genii, with 500 
gilded, wooden, or clay figures, none of them having any preten- 
sions to artistic merit ; and the temple of the Five Genii : these 
are the only ones we have seen at all worthy of notice. 

Two guild halls, one at Hankow and one at Canton, are de- 
serving of close attention as examples of rich, florid Chinese 
architecture. The tiling of the roof, the elaborate wood-carving, 
the rich shrines, and gold-carved gods at Hankow are gorgeous. 
Indeed, it would seem the design was to see how much gilt and 
carving could be gotten into given spaces. The hall at Canton, 
though very fine, is much less elaborate than the other. They 
are both a species of merchant boards of trade, where heavy 
native transactions are completed. Each has several halls, several 
small temples in honor of different gods, theatres, banqueting 
halls, and gardens, and cover large areas of ground. Great trans- 
actions, from what I could learn, are closed and cemented with a 
feast. 

The pagodas are more attractive than the temples. Some are 
of great antiquity, dating far back in the early centuries of our 
era. Some are more or less in decay, shrubs and small trees 
growing on the projections of the several stories and on the sum- 
mits. Five and seven stories are the usual heights of those on the 
Yang-tse ; nine of those on the Pearl River and in Canton. Some 
of these latter are in good restoration, and are very pretty land- 
marks, and as such they are used by the navigators on all the 
rivers. As far as we could learn they seem to have been erected 
not in connection with any temples, or in any way as places 
of worship, but as a sort of propitiatory offering to the gods, for 
the purpose of bringing good-luck to the builder or builders, or to 
the locality. The whole theory of Chinese worship seems to be 
based upon the idea that the gods are a species of devils, ready 
and rather willing to work harm to mortals, and, therefore, to be 
constantly propitiated and appeased. The one great god whom 



124 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Buddha represents is a good god, and does all things well. A 
man's good ancestors are in heaven in the presence of the one 
good god or gods. To them, and through them to him, thanks 
are rendered for blessings on earth. No prayers are offered for 
the purpose of affecting in any way the future state of the 
petitioner. Temporal blessings alone are sought. The future is 
fixed and determined, in accordance with his good or bad deeds 
on earth. But the devilish gods are constantly meddling with 
men's affairs, and putting their fingers into men's pies. To pre- 
vent such interference being harmful, offerings are made. There 
are some gods who now and then do good and kindly acts toward 
men. These have rich promises and sometimes valuable presents 
offered to fix their kindly interference. 

One sees frequently a small-footed wife — the first and real wife 
— who has not been able to hold the affections of her husband, 
who is spending too much of his time with one of his big-footed, 
and, therefore, more active, wives ; one sees this neglected wife 
clap her hands to the god of woman, and give him a few " cash," 
while she prays him to bless her by making her the mother of a 
boy, and thereby acceptable to her liege lord. 

By the way, a wealthy Chinese merchant told me that the rea- 
son he married a small-foot was because she was not able to get 
into harm, but a big-footed woman could get about too easily, and 
could get into mischief ; that his main wife lived in Canton — he 
would not take her where Europeans lived ; that his second and 
third wives lived with him in Hong Kong. He went twice a 
moon to Canton to see his first wife. The first wife is the lawful 
one, and cannot be put away at will, or if so must be well main- 
tained. The other wives are little more than slaves, and can be 
put away at pleasure. But he said public opinion protected them, 
and no man dared send off one of his wives after she had borne 
-him a child without making ample provision for her support, and 
that custom bound a Chinaman even more than law did. That if 
he himself were to go abroad with his wife he would be willing and 
glad to introduce her to intelligent foreigners, but that here 
in China custom would not permit him to let any man, other than 
a father or a brother, visit his wife. " The fact is," he finally said, 
" the Chinaman too fool jealous. When he lose his fool jealous, 
he come as good man as Englishman or Melican man." 

On the 15th, in Canton, we found ourselves in a densely packed 
street. We could scarcely get along. A procession was moving, 
in honor of the " God of Water," I think. Well-dressed mer- 
chants, in a sort of guild uniform, were marching behind bands of 
music, followed by little boys, dressed in exquisite embroidery, on 
ponies, and girls beautifully dressed, on chairs all covered with 
flowers ; some in studied positions, but sustained by hidden 
frames so adjusted as to prevent weariness. These were followed 
by little pagodas and temples of lacquer and kingfisher enamel. 



CATHEDRAL OF CANTON. 125 

Successions of this sort of thing followed each other for nearly an 
hour. All was good-humor and good order. Before the proces- 
sion came up the street was packed, yet, by some sort of Chinese 
jugglery, the crowd jammed itself to the sides so that there was 
room for the moving line. We got into a pretty store, and to our 
amazement the owner had stools brought for us to stand on, so 
we could look over the heads of others, and even made some men 
move to one side who were in front of us. And yet we came to 
the " City of Rams " expecting to be insulted, and probably 
injured. Probably the traveller imagines much, or brings upon 
himself much, of that which he is in the habit of calling Chinese 
hostility. The real fact is, the Chinese very much fear foreigners, 
and stand in awe of them. They will rarely fail to lower the eye 
and turn away when a European or American looks upon them 
with an earnest eye. 

We had quite a long conversation with the bishop of Canton, 
who received and treated us with great kindness, for which 
we are under obligations to his Grace, Archbishop Feehan, 
whose Latin letter we carry with us when calling upon any of 
the Catholic hierarchy. The good bishop has been in this 
country some 25 years, and speaks only French and Chinese. 
He was greatly pleased when informed of the kind treatment 
we had received in his city, and agreed with us thoroughly 
that much of the reported hostility of the Chinese was imagi- 
nary, or somewhat brought on by the mistakes of the tourists. 
He said there was a very bitter feeling toward the French 
after their late war with the Chinese, but he could see that it 
was grooving less year by year. In his district he has in his 
church about 30,000 members. They had hard and slow work 
to win these people from their superstitions. I suggested that 
the bishops of some 1800 years ago would have thought his 
success great, and that he had cause for hope. His face bright- 
ened up as he replied : "^/2, oui ; toujorirs V esperance ; V esperance 
est toujours le notre.'' The bishop wears a pig-tail and looks a 
Chinaman. The church building, whose foundation was laid 
some 25 years ago, has now a complete exterior, and is being 
beautifully finished within. It is all of cut stone — no wood or 
plaster. It has two lofty towers, and is excelled in architec- 
tural purity by few such buildings in Europe. There are beau- 
tiful marble altars and rich stained-glass windows. They are 
earnest and wise, these French priests. The Orientals cannot 
comprehend pure simplicity. They must be appealed to through 
their admiration and their awe for the grand. This magnifi- 
cent church towering far above every thing else except a few 
pagodas in the " City of the Rams," seen for many miles up 
and down the great river, will do a vast deal to win the Celestials 
from their belief in the five genii, and the supposed petrified 
rams' heads which lie before them. 



126 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

The legend is that ages ago five genii were flying over the 
land, which was greatly distressed by a famine. They kindly 
alighted, together with five rams of plenty. Monster footprints 
— i. e. old-time water-worn marks — several feet long are shown in 
their temple garden, where they first touched earth, and five 
water-worn stones, resembling rams' heads, are in front of their 
statues. A little kindly treatment by the gray head of our party 
to a prettily dressed child brought upon us the bright smiles 
and kindly words from his Mantu mother — the wife, probably, 
of some high official of the quarter, and here that day for 
worship. 

Before forgetting what I said of the beneficial effect of pomp 
on these people in religious matters, I will say something of the 
misplaced economy of our government in all the East — that is, the 
niggardly manner in which our consuls are forced to live when 
compared to that of other western powers. I think every other 
government has its fixed consular residence, always handsome 
buildings, with fine grounds. These impress the people, and 
win respect from men who value an ofificial in proportion to the 
style in which he moves. A mandarin or magistrate goes to and 
from the courts in a procession of ofificials, with wheezing fifes, 
and beating gongs, and banners flying. This is approved of by 
all the natives, because it impresses all with the power surround- 
ing the officials. A magistrate hearing a criminal cause has his 
personal attendants about him, and every few moments his pipe- 
bearer hands him the pipe, from which he takes a few whiffs, to 
help preserve his calm sense of justice. There is absolutely no 
caste in China, but the official moves and acts ever in great state. 
Wise men have found these things beneficial. 

America sends consuls out here clothed with judicial powers. 
They settle all difficulties and all troubles involving the property, 
'life, and liberty of their countrymen. They represent the majesty 
of our government. They take evidence involving life and 
property and give decisions, and yet one we met lives in a re- 
spectable building because a missionary happened to desire a visit 
home, and next spring I fear he will have to roll up his bed and 
look out for a bunk to lay his head on. He may or he may not 
get a fitting house, but even if he does he loses, by his forced 
moving, prestige with the people around him. This thing has 
been thrown up to us both in Japan and China by the few natives 
with whom we talked. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth 
doing rightly. Our government is a mighty one. Its navy is 
the laughing-stock of the world. That one can stand ; we are a 
peace-seeking people. Our institutions do not require ships to 
send around the world for the junketing of admirals and commo- 
dores and their wives and daughters. But our merchants and our 
business men visit all lands. When they come to the East let 
them find ministers and consuls who can try their causes in 



LIFE ON CANTON BOATS. 127 

buildings which belong to our government, and thereby help to 
make the people we may be forced to contend with feel a respect 
for the government whose flag floats over us. Our Congressmen 
do not take their seats for 13 months after being elected. It 
would be a good idea to force each one of them to spend a 
good part of the time in going around the world, thereby learn- 
ing how to legislate for the nation, instead of running back and 
forth to Washington to get some paltry position for workers at 
the polls. 

One of the peculiar things which strikes the traveller at Can- 
ton is its vast floating population, and its boats, manned by 
women. It is said there are over 80,000 of the 1,600,000 Can- 
tonese who live and die in little boats on the river. These are 
of three sizes. The largest or regular marine boat is 25 to 40 
feet long, with a beam of 10 to 15 feet. Some of them have a 
sort of second story. They traffic, carrying freight and passen- 
gers. Their owners never go off of them. At night these lie 
side by side, 10 to 20 deep, with another row meeting their bows, 
and so on for hundreds of yards. Some of them are beautifully 
decorated within, not outside — no Chinese boat ever is, or even 
painted — and are called flower-boats. Opposite them are those 
termed the room-boats. Here the revelry of Canton is carried 
on. Susan, our bright sampan girl, guided us from one boat to 
another, now and then stretching out her tiny hand to assist us 
in our movements. A gentleman wishes to entertain some 
friends. He hires a flower-boat for the evening, the hire securing 
the supper and wines. He then hires one, two, three, or more 
singing- and dancing-girls — a sort of odalisques ; — each guest 
can bring a girl if he wishes. Here they meet to make a night 
of it, eating and drinking and gambling, the girls singing, play- 
ing, or dancing for their amusement. The boats are all open in 
front, like the stores, and hundreds of idlers pass to and fro to 
see the revellers. This they seem to relish. We were beckoned 
to enter and partake, but with a motion of thanks declined. This 
is kept up from five in the afternoon to one, two, or three at night. 
Although there are hundreds of these pleasure-boats, and perhaps 
thousands of the singing-girls, yet the population of the city is so 
great that this thing goes on night after night throughout the 
year, and from year to year. The water makes the air cool, and 
these flower-boats take the place of beer-gardens in Germany, 
caf^s in France, and tea-houses in Japan and in other cities of 
China. The girls are of the lower classes, belong to the master 
or mistress of the house-boats, and are hired at one dollar an 
evening. They are allowed to drink, but not to eat. I was told 
that if this were permitted their coarse manners would crop 
out in eating, but that they quickly learn how to drink like 
ladies. 

The sampans are much smaller boats, about 15 to 20 feet long, 



128 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

with a beam of five to eight feet. In this Httle affair a woman 
will live with two or three children. If she has no daughter old 
enough, she manages to buy a girl grown or nearly grown. These 
two manage the boat, of which there are thousands. They do all 
the light river carrying, and it is very great. Sampan women will 
rush upon a steamer, seize one's valise or even trunk, and carry it 
down a gangway with the strength of a man and with more 
agility. They will give one a hand to steady him, and, in fact, 
protect and assist a strong man as he at home has been accus- 
tomed to assist women. 

Our hotel was in Honan, an island suburb across the river from 
the main city of Canton. Susan, lithe, sharp, quick-witted Susan, 
owned two boats, and had three pretty daughters, all nearly as 
old as herself, and two little children. She or they were always 
on hand to scull us from the hotel to the city, a few hundred 
yards across. And how they could scull. In and out, under the 
bows of junks, through crowds of big boats or little sampans, 
rowing like men, climbing like monkeys. Our Susans were all 
pretty little women, beautifully formed, with tiny hands, if hard ; 
and such feet and ankles ! It is impossible to describe them. 
The reader can imagine them, and can't go amiss, so perfect were 
they — real models in nut-brown. And Susan was ubiquitous. 
It mattered not where we would reach the river after a walk, 
Susan was sure to be there to scull us over, to take our ten cents, 
and to crack a joke in pigeon English — a joke not always the 
most delicate ; for none of them are prudes. We wondered how 
she with only two boats could be everywhere at once. On our 
last day we were rowing down the river when a woman's voice 
from another sampan rang in my ears. We looked, and lo, it was 
our real Susan ; and yet Susan was rowing us. We then dis- 
covered that all these little boat-women — that is, the young ones, 
had beautiful forms and perfect feet and ankles. The boys on 
taking a boat never saw above the ankle, and in that way were 
joking with a bright-eyed woman supposed to be Susan, and 
had not discovered we did not have our Susan, whose ankles 
were pretty, but whose eyes squinted badly. It is truly won- 
derful the amount of work these little women can do. Often 
one will be seen sculling a boat with a baby strapped to her 
back. Indeed, nearly half of the boats had babies, and one was 
generally fastened to one of the women's shoulders. 

The Chinese are fearful gamesters, and one never goes far 
that he does not see a game going on — a sort of faro — coolies 
gambling on the ground at the corners of streets, workmen gam- 
bling in shops, and, what was queerest of all, we rarely passed a 
temple without seeing a game in progress on the steps or the por- 
tico. The stakes are very small — all in " cash," which is the tenth 
part of a cent. These are the money of the people, and some of 
the heaviest loads carried by the porters are the baskets of cash 



APPROACHING BANGKOK. 129 

transported to close purchases, 1,000 of them to a dollar. Each 
cash weighs about as much as an American cent. 

This is the 25th ; we will be at the bar in the Menam River to- 
night. To-morrow we will be in Bangkok, and fear we will swel- 
ter in the heat. Out here, over a deep blue sea, the thermometer 
is high in the 8o's. The boys are in their shirt-sleeves and I am 
uncomfortably warm in an alpaca. 



CHAPTER XV. 

SIAM— RICH SOIL— VAST FORESTS OF TIMBER— BANGKOK— VUL- 
TURES EATING THE DEAD— A CREMATION— AUDIENCE 
WITH THE KING— SIAMESE THEATRE. 

Bmigkok, Siam, December 5, 1887. 

If we could study secret biographies of the great men of the 
world, those who have left footprints on the sands of time, we 
would probably find that the currents of their lives were turned 
into the channels which bore them to their greatness by most 
trivial circumstances, by mere straws. So, too, are men's opin- 
ions moulded, or at least colored, by the veriest trifles — colored 
into prejudices which require time and care to eradicate. He 
whose mother's treasured porcelain service was of the old blue- 
willow pattern, has, more or less, his impressions of the Celestial 
Empire fashioned upon the model he studied upon the plates from 
which he ate. 

Our ideas of tropical landscapes are nearly all built upon the 
pictures in our geographies, showing us a dense fern and palm 
jungle, with a huge boa-constrictor wound about a tree, and a 
tiger springing for a deer, but likely to land in the open jaws of a 
crocodile ; or of a forest of banyan and tree-ferns overhanging a 
dark stream, with a naked native paddling a tiny canoe beneath 
the clustering branches. These facts should be considered by the 
educators of youth ; even the illustrations of children's books 
should be made carefully true. Here I would suggest that school 
atlases lead into errors which fix themselves in the minds of chil- 
dren and last through their lives. Maps of our own country and 
of the several States are upon a large scale, while those of for- 
eign countries are on a greatly reduced one. The eye of the child 
measures all by the space covered on the sheet, without reference 
to the scale. The result is that erroneous ideas of the relative 
magnitude of different countries become fixed in their mind. 
This has been the fact in my own case, and of every fellow-trav- 
eller to whom I have mentioned the thing. School geographies 
should have, all maps on a uniform scale. Pupils would then, 
without a thought, acquire accurate comparisons, and would 
better understand the world's geography. 

Travellers' maps have on the margin a small one of some famil- 
iar home land, on the same scale with the maps, so as to enable 

130 



TROPICAL SCENERY. 131 

the traveller at a glance to understand the dimensions of the coun- 
tries he visits. Rand and McNally's admirable folding maps use 
Ohio as the base for comparison. We have several times heard 
intelligent travellers, who knew the approximate number of square 
miles in China in figures, yet exclaim with surprise when remark- 
ing the insignificant little spot represented by Ohio's 40,000 square 
miles in the margin of the map of the Celestial emperor's mighty 
dominion. This is thrown out as a hint to intelligent school- 
boards. 

My early imbibed impressions have been a constant stumbling- 
block to me in the vasty East. These thoughts have been sug- 
gested by my week's sojourn in Siam, the last and fast-changing 
relic of Oriental kingdoms yet existing in the world. When we 
steamed up the Menam River to Bangkok a week ago, and after- 
ward in a little steam barge to the old capital, Ayuthia, 70 miles 
above, I felt as if I were continuing my bo3'hood dream of a tropi- 
cal land — the living picture of the huge banyan, with its many 
arms ; the dense tangle of mighty tree-ferns and broad-leafed, low 
palms ; the spreading low trees, clothed in a mass of flowering 
vines ; the clumps of bamboo, with their feathery tops ; the slen- 
der betel, the stately cocoa, and the massive fan-topped sugar- 
palms ; the tiny canoe darting in and out of the little creeks and 
canals almost dark into deep green ; the dusky native paddling 
his little dugout. Here almost alone did the early pictures give 
us true ideas of tropical lands visited. These were my first reali- 
zations of a veritable land of the burning sun, and might well have 
been the spots which suggested the pictures (or rather one of 
them) which I had seen in my school-book a half century and 
more ago. These have printed on my mind a photograph which 
will not fade while I live, and one I will ever enjoy when looking 
back upon it. 

When we left home for a race with the sun we had no idea of 
coming here, but did so owing to the promise of Prince Deva- 
wongse, whom we met, as before stated, on our voyage across the 
Pacific. We did not expect much from the promise, for we knew 
men of his position would be overrun if they pay too much atten- 
tion to travellers, who are now so abundant. But, finding we 
could get here and not exhaust more than a couple of weeks of 
our time, we came, and have been well repaid for the trip, and 
must acknowledge our indebtedness to the Prince, not only for 
courtesies extended, but for others he wished to extend. We 
would have probably gone up the river to Baheng, and then 
across the country to Moulmain by elephants, had not the king's 
barge been absent on an expedition up the river. This would 
have been a decided novelty, but there was no possibility of do- 
ing it by purely private conveyance, except with a loss of at least 
six or eight weeks. With a royal barge and the king's order for ele- 
phants we could have done it in a month — possibly in three weeks. 



132 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Siam has about 250,000 square miles of territory in the king- 
dom proper and its immediate dependencies. It is the most 
speculative land in Asia. Every thing is possible to it, and a vast 
deal may come out of it. Its native name is " Thai." I am writ- 
ing on the steamer, which we boarded an hour since for Singa- 
pore, but which, with true Orientalism, will not get off for three 
or four hours after its advertised time. I mention this to show 
why I have no means of finding whether I have the proper name 
or not. It means " free land," or " land of the free," and yet 
there is not a single free thing in it. 

The king owns every thing, and, in a certain sense, everybody. 
He is lord of all he surveys, and yet is himself the veriest slave 
of the grovelling superstitions and vile customs of his people — 
superstitions and customs which must be a source of intense dis- 
gust to so intelligent a man as King Chulalanghorn evidently is, 
yet which he could not escape except at the risk of losing his 
throne. Absolute monarch, his will a law to every man in the 
realm, his proclamations gainsaid by no one, yet he himself is 
absolutely governed by custom and the opinions of his nobles, 
even to the daily routine of his life. With tastes and aspirations 
natural to a man of culture, and ambitions growing out of his 
royal position and his evident desire for his country's prosperity, 
he is utterly powerless to do the half he would for his people, be- 
cause he is locked up in his palace and can see the people's needs 
only through the eyes of others, and can hear only the voice of 
flattery, or, what is yet worse, the voice of self-seeking and too 
often dishonest ambition. 

With a kindly, gentle face, bespeaking a warm and generous 
heart, capable of deep affection, and showing his loving disposi- 
tion by his real grief for the untimely death of his first queen, he 
is compelled to take many wives, — the daughters of his noble- 
men, — and now a little over 34 years of age, is the father of some 
30 odd children. When I left his presence, after a kindly and 
free audience of a half hour, and recall the warm and manly grasp 
he gave my hand at parting, I could not help saying to myself : 
" Monarch ! absolute master of 9,000,000 of human beings, that 
man is the veriest slave in his whole dominions." I pity, rather 
than envy him. 

This country is one of great fertility, having a 'Soil in many 
parts equal to the valley of the Nile. Indeed its fertility in all 
the rice-growing sections is owing to the annual overflow of its 
great rivers, which bring down rich deposits from the forest-clad 
mountains. This year its product of rice is somewhere about 12,- 
000,000 of piculsj each of, I think, 130 odd pounds. It sends to 
Singapore about 16,000 head of cattle each year, and yet a vast 
portion of its territory, and a very rich portion too, is an impene- 
trable jungle of the most valuable timber in the world, — forest of 
teak, ebony, and other hard woods, — all of which the world wants, 



BETEL CHEWING. 133 

and yet the trees grow and die, and breed the deadly jungle fever, 
which even the natives cannot brave with impunity. Millions of 
acres of these forests are of great fertility, and would, if the tim- 
ber were cut off, feed millions of people. She has rich coal-fields, 
and very rich gold and tin mines. Some parts of her mountains 
abound in precious stones, especially sapphires and rubies. These 
rich mineral valuables are almost entirely lost, and the immense 
timber resources idle, because there is not a road in the kingdom. 
In the lowlands near the coast, and running back 100 miles or so, 
there are for the sole means of transportation, the river and little 
canals. These irrigate the rice fields, and are navigated by small 
row-boats. The land is cultivated very poorly ; the small one- 
handled plow, drawn by the buffalo and ox, doing the work. It 
is said her people are all slaves. But it is not the slavery we gen- 
erally understand, but a species of slavish feudalism. Prisoners 
of war and their children for all time are absolute slaves. Of 
these there are a large number. But the remainder are bonded to 
some master. A parent sells his child, or a man sells himself, or 
rather mortgages himself. He borrows a sum of money at a very 
heavy rate of interest — 15 per cent, being the legal rate, but a 
higher rate permissible, — and pays the interest through life. The 
debt also binds his children under this feudal custom. Every one 
first belongs as feudatory to some nobleman, being marked by a 
tattoo, generally on the wrist, to indicate his master. He owes 
to the nobleman 15 days' work each year. In addition to this, he 
is bound generally by a mortgage or sale to some other master, 
perhaps less than a nobleman. 

Polygamy is universal, and one sees at the theatre a man in the 
dress circle of men, while his wife or wives and slaves (female) 
are in the women's circle. All classes chew the betel nut, and at 
the theatre each family has the betel-pot and spittoon. The latter 
is carried by a slave, who hands it to the ladies when they wish 
to spit. The betel nut is astringent and somewhat intoxicant. It 
is chewed in connection with a paste made of lime, tobacco, and 
pepper leaf. It not only blackens the teeth but cracks the lips, 
and so injures the gums that the teeth are caused to protrude and 
look straggled. 

The king, princes, and common people are alike slaves to the 
nasty habit, and half of the women have their mouths injured, if 
not absolutely distorted by it. Otherwise the women are decidedly 
comely, having fine forms and good gaits. Women and men dress 
so nearly alike that we could hardly distinguish one from the 
other for several days, for all wear short hair. The dress is a 
cloth, called " panoong," about two feet wide, wrapped around 
the waist, with one corner drawn between the legs and caught in 
a girdle at the waist. This makes a sort of flowing trouser, falling 
to the knees. A gentleman wears a closely buttoned coat (sacque), 
buttoned to the neck, with long stockings and low shoes. The 



134 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

woman generally allows the " panoong " to hang like a petticoat, 
and wraps about her breast a girdle, leaving the upper part of the 
bosom and shoulders entirely bare, and none wear shoes. Many 
of the working women dispense with the girdle entirely. The 
great mass of people, even in the city, go bare-legged and bare- 
footed. This is universal in the country. The women appear to 
be industrious, and perform much more than half the work. The 
men are lazy, and, with the exception of fishing, appear willing to 
leave the women to earn the bread. All are inveterate gamblers, 
and one rarely sees a gambling-house, of which there are a great 
many, otherwise than full. They are entirely open to the street, 
canal, or river, and at night are distinguished by their many 
lights. I am told the king would gladly lessen the number of 
these gambling places, but could not dispense with the revenue 
they bring in. The inveterate habit of gambling is the cause of 
a large part of the people's slavery. They sell their children and 
themselves for its gratification. The wily Chinese monopolize the 
gambling-houses, as, indeed, they do nearly all the avenues of 
wealth and nearly all kinds of business which require industry 
and skill. 

Bangkok has over 80,000 of these people, many of whom have 
acquired large fortunes and hold prominent positions. They are 
the business men of the country, and also the cooks and waiters 
for the Europeans who live here, and to my surprise the waiters 
in the prince's dining-room wore pigtails. I do not wonder so 
many foreigners throughout the East prophesy that they are the 
coming race of the world. 

Bangkok lies on either side of the Menam River, thirty miles 
from its mouth. This is a stream varying from 400 to 800 yards 
in width, and running through a perfectly flat country, the banks 
at high tide being barely out of the water. Fringing it for many 
miles from the mouth is a heavy growth of tropical plants — palms 
of several varieties, tree-ferns, tamarind and mango trees, several 
trees with waxy leaves and having large flowers, and indeed many 
varieties of beautiful woods, so thick together that seen from the 
level of the river they appear to be an almost impenetrable jungle. 
But behind this fringe of forest stretch great plains of rice fields 
as far as the eye can reach, unless when varied by another fringe 
along some large canal. Scattered through these fields are beauti- 
ful sugar-palms now and then clumped in groves. The great teak 
and ebony forests up the river are several hundred miles from the 
coast. These are so dense that the superintendent of the con- 
struction of telegraph, Mr. Fritz — an American — consumed two 
or three months in cutting a way for a line through a forest of 
65 miles. There was an advance party of some 500 natives cutting 
the trail, and a second party of 170 putting up the poles and wire. 
Elephants were used for all carrying. So terrible was the jungle 
fever that in that one jungle some 250 natives died within two 



BANGKOK AND BATHING. 135 

xnonths. If a dose of 20 grains of quinine failed to break the 
fever death almost immediately ensued. 

A large amount of logs are floated down the Menam, and 
sawed at Bangkok. But so difficult is the getting of logs to the 
river, there being absolutely no kind of roads, that the timber 
sells in Bangkok at about 60 cents a cubic foot. And yet Mr. 
Fritz assured us there are vast quantities of this timber rotting in 
the forests within comparatively short distances from the streams. 
The people are so utterly lazy that their labor can never be de- 
pended upon to build roads, or in any way develop the resources 
of the land. Foreign energy and capital must be called into 
requisition. The constant aggressiveness of the English and 
French in this corner of Asia makes the king naturally fearful of 
getting their aid, and the jealousy of these two of the Germans, 
renders them out of the question. One can see but one way out 
of the dilemma, and that is for the king to call upon American 
pluck and energy. He has nothing to fear from them politically 
or otherwise ; and the other nationalities can feel no jealousy of 
the republican in this land of despotism. I have good reason to 
believe, in fact to know, that king and princes feel very kindly 
towards us, and have no doubt that an American syndicate could 
find a splendid field for energy in Siam — a field which would 
bring to the operators large profit, and would do more good in 
educating and elevating this squalid people than 1,000 mis- 
sionaries could do in a quarter of a century. A prince said to me : 
" We acknowledge our great indebtedness to the American 
missionaries ; they never turn a man from Buddha to Christ, but 
we owe to them nearly all of our ideas of western progress. The 
king feels very kindly toward them, and has no fear that they will 
do any harm by converting our people ; but business follows where 
the missionaries go." 

Bangkok is entirely different from all other eastern cities we 
have seen. Elsewhere the houses are compacted together so as 
to cover as little space as possible, and the people are massed as 
in hives. This city, however, with its 350,000 people, covers 
more ground than Canton with its great population. There are 
few streets, but they are quite broad. Canals run in every direc- 
tion, and are so numerous that the Siamese are proud to call 
their capital the Venice of the East. Houses project over these 
canals, with open balconies, and both sides of the river for six or 
more miles are lined with floating houses, used not only for resi- 
dences, but for business. People do their shopping in boats; 
and while a woman sells to her customer in view, for all houses 
have open fronts, her lazy husband fishes, sitting upon a box of 
goods, and his children bathe and swim around the house. In 
rowing or being rowed about there was never a moment that we 
could not see somewhere a bather ; and just at sundown all the 
common world seems amphibious. The "panoong" is kept on. 



136 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

when in the water, and is then either exchanged for a dry one or 
left on to dry. Rivers and canals are always filled by freight 
boats, 40 to 60 feet long ; by small peddler-boats, by canoes of all 
sizes, from ten feet, barely holding a man, up to 100 or more 
feet, with 50 or more paddlers moving in state with some high 
ofificial. I saw one long canoe with nearly 100 rowers. Each one 
would dip his paddle and then lift it on high, a curious sight thus 
to see nearly 100 paddles poised in air at the same time. There 
are quite a large number of small steam barges in the city 
belonging to Europeans engaged in timber sawing and in rice 
milling and shipping. These dart about very rapidly. In fact 
all boats seem to do so, for the tide runs very swiftly, and boats 
going with its current move in the channel, while those going 
against it stick to the shore eddies. This makes the river a very 
lively one, especially towards the cool of the day. Trees abound 
throughout the town, along streets, along the canals, and about 
the houses, many of them of good forest size. Looking down 
from a high pagoda, one can scarcely realize one's self in the heart 
of a great city. The ordinary house is almost entirely lost in the 
mass of green. Here and there one peeps out looking cool and 
shaded. But the lofty snow-white pagodas, the tall steep-roofed 
temples, roofed in tiles of many colors, many of them in gilt ; the 
beautiful kiosk turrets of the palaces, the gilded royal " wat " and 
cenotaph, and the white palaces themselves, make the city 
from an eminence look like a vast royal garden, wth princely 
palaces and Oriental temples nestled among ornamental tropical 
verdure. The " wat " is a sort of monastery, with its temple and 
kiosk and lodging-houses of the priests within a single enclosure. 
There are a great many in the city, and many of them of wonder- 
ful richness. 

Some of the temples and pagodas are apparently made up en- 
tirely of gilt and glass mosaic, in small pieces inlaid in cement 
walls and flashing in the sunlight like mountains of gold and 
diamonds. The royal " wat " makes the looker-on feel that 
Aladdin's lamp is close by, revealing to him scenes of fairy won- 
der, rather than scenes of actual reality. It is within and with- 
out — its several temple buildings and its five or six lofty round- 
pointed pagodas — made up of gold and gems. The gold is of 
burnt, gilded pottery in small squares of an inch, brilliantly 
glazed ; the gems are of glass of different colors, and set like 
rose-faced diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. Looking upon the 
pile of these buildings, covering several acres, just as the sun goes 
down, with a gentle breeze causing the thousand tiny bells which 
hang to cornice, frieze, and projecting point to tinkle, we almost 
felt as if we had been carried off by some flying genii and gently 
dropped upon a scene of Oriental fable. Unfortunately all of the 
temples, pagodas, and kiosks are of brick, stuccoed with Portland 
cement, and the gems and gold planted into it will last only for a 



CORPSES EATEN BY VULTURES. 137 

short time. Many thousands of dollars are required each year to 
keep the entire fabrics of beauty from tumbling into decay. A 
change of dynasty will bring quickly the glory of Siam's capital 
into a heap of debris. Ayutia, once a great city, which was aban- 
doned 100 and odd years ago when this royal family founded 
Bangkok, is already a heap of ruins, its " wats " and lofty pagodas 
furnishing soil for the roots of rapidly-growing tropical plants. 
They are not absolutely fallen down, but the plants and shrubs 
are climbing up their lofty heights and find homes. 

The first thing we did on our arrival at Bangkok was to drive 
to the royal garden, where a fine military band plays every Sun- 
day afternoon. The music was good, the leader German. The 
gardens are beautiful, one avenue of bamboos being as unique as 
pretty. This tree here, as we are told, too, it does in India, grows 
in massy clumps, almost like a solid tree. These clumps, about 50 
feet apart, on either side of a long avenue, send up their feathery 
plumes about 60 feet, meeting at a less height over the roadway, 
and making a perfect green, Gothic arch, which, viewed from 
either end, is as regular as a cathedral aisle. In the gardens we 
met many of the 200 foreigners who make Bangkok their home. 

The next day early we called upon Col. Child, our genial min- 
ister. He took us in charge, and to him we owe much which 
made our visit to Siam very charming. We called on Prince 
Devawongse, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who received us most 
cordially, and, after entertaining us for some time, sent one of his 
aids to show us the famous sacred white elephants and the royal 
" wat." The white elephants have blue eyes, are light-colored, but 
not whiter than Barnum's beast, which, by the way, did not come 
from Siam. The poor brutes here do not seem to enjoy very 
greatly their sacred bondage, but tied by the hind leg they sway 
back and forth, and beg for a nut as readily as do those in 
menageries. The oldest wears a brace of ivories which would 
make him quite sacred to an ivory worker, but munches green 
grass in a very unsacred way. Instead of being housed in gilded 
quarters, he is tied up in a dingy stable and is attended by a half- 
naked mahout instead of a priest in saintly robes ; a priest, how- 
ever, oversees his household. 

On our second day we rowed about some of the canals, and then 
climbed the old " Wat-Se-Kat," a huge pagoda over 300 feet in di- 
ameter, built of a solid mass of brick — countless millions being in 
the mass — and lifting 200 feet high. A stairway leads around it, 
as in the picture of the Tower of Babel. From this we had our 
first view of the forest-clad city. Below us immediately were the 
common crematory grounds, and the square in which the bodies 
of those too poor to pay for cremation are given to the vultures. 
A large flock of these mournful birds were roosting on a low 
pagoda close by. Seeing a smoke we supposed a cremation was 
going on, but found it arose from burning coffins and rubbish. 



138 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

We then went to the square for the poor, and, to our surprise, al- 
most horror, a newly dead body had just been laid in it. It was 
limp and hardly cold. It was of an old woman who had died of 
cholera, always here. A covering was laid over the middle of the 
body, but the head, bust, arms, and legs were bare. 

Just as we entered a vulture flew down, then another and 
others. Two or three dogs were walking about near-by. The 
birds hopped about the body, but did not seem satisfied it was 
dead. Presently one of the dogs stole up and commenced to tear 
a piece of flesh from the cheek. Rapidly the birds closed in, com- 
mencing at the eyes. The sight was so sickening that we all 
turned and went out, not looking back. We saw, however, the 
relations of the dead squatted in a sort of shed temple close by, 
while a robed priest was reading from bamboo leaves the service 
for the dead. We felt that if these, the relatives, were not hor- 
rified at the mangling of their loved one, it was sickly sentimen- 
tality for us so to be ; so we returned. We had not been absent 
five minutes, but in that time the vultures had come in such num- 
bers that they were a squirming, tossing mass over the corpse. 
Five dogs were there by this time, snapping and growling and 
trying to drive the birds away so that they could get at the feast. 
Presently the birds seemed for the moment satisfied, and hobbled 
off. Then the dogs went in. But one of the attendants, seeing 
our disgust at the dog part of the drama, drove them away, when 
the vultures again returned. In less than thirty minutes from the 
time the body was laid there, the bloody, gorged birds flew off, 
one by one, and left the bare skeleton for the dogs to pull at the 
sinews and at the tough hands and feet, which the vultures' beaks 
could not tear. 

At first we were all shocked by the sight, but very quickly this feel- 
ing passed off. We could not help feeling it was not a whit worse 
than laying a loved one in the ground to become food for worms. 
The vultures seemed but fitting ministers ; it is their calling, and 
has been so for countless ages. For countless successions of gen- 
erations they have been aiding man in this way to get rid of his 
dead, instead of putting them in the ground to feed worms and 
poison the waters of life. But there was something horrible in 
the dog's performance. He is man's friend, and man takes care 
of him. We did not after that pass a Siamese cur that we did not 
feel a desire to whack him over the head. But, after all, the 
revulsion of feeling which came so quickly to us was owing to the 
fact that the friends of the dead woman — perhaps her daughters 
and grandchildren — were there within ten paces of the scene, lis- 
tening, with bowed heads and clasped hands, to the promises of 
their deity to those who have lived piously. The priest chanted 
in monotonous tone, but reverently and with intense pathos, the 
lesson he was reading. After the bii'ds had takea all they cared 
to have, we turned from the dogs fighting over the skeleton and lis- 



CREMATION OF A PRINCE. 139 

tened almost with awe to the funeral services, and watched with a 
full eye the faces of the stricken family. Some of them were old, 
and would soon lie in that same charnelhouse whose floor was the 
earth — mother of us all — and whose ceiling was the blue sky far 
above. What mattered it to them how their bodies should return 
to the dust, if their souls could only wing their flight through 
yonder wondrous blue to mingle again with the spirit of the ever- 
living God from whence they came? We spoke to a Siamese 
prince of our manner of burying. He said : " I will be cremated, 
but a thousand times rather would I be eaten by vultures than to 
lie and rot in the sodden, nasty ground." Which is the better, 
his ideas or ours ? The world is governed by conventionalism. 
That which is accepted by all is the best. There is but one thing 
which is absolutely good. That is a life in accordance with the 
will of God. Who can, who may rightly, interpret that will ? 

By a singular transition we were witnesses that same afternoon of 
the ceremony of cremation of one of the powerful and rich of the 
land. At half-past four we went to a large " wat," to be present 
at the last rites in honor of " Phranai Samochai," who died nine 
months before, and had been lying in state in spices and sweet 
herbs in one of the spacious halls of his palace. Colonel Child and 
I got there a little early. We wandered about. On the matting, 
spread about on the grass in one of the temple courts, were the 
wives and female slaves of the dead man, all crouched down, with 
black "panoong"and white scarfs about theirbodies. In an inner 
court were some men sawing into a very large box. We went 
near. It was the outer case containing the coffin, and air-tight. 
Scarcely had the saw passed through the board when the putrid 
gases escaping, drove us from the inclosure. The body was then 
put into a small vaulted room. Into this the head wife entered, 
sobbing, and following came others. 

In the outer courts two theatrical performances were going on 
out of hearing of each other. One in Chinese — for the deceased 
was a Chinaman by birth — the other in Siamese. These are pro- 
vided for the people that they may enjoy themselves, for the 
burial of a good man is not a cause of mourning. He has gone to 
a better life, and his friends should rejoice. Between these two 
theatres (temporary) there was an erection, some 12 x 20 feet high, 
on four columns. This was a handsomely carved white cornice, 
from which to the ground drooped black drapery, caught up in 
white. Under this was an oven-shaped altar, and over it an open 
white catafalque covered with flowers and gilt. The son of the 
dead man, acting as master of ceremonies, seeing us walking 
about, sent to us a bright lad, who we learned was grandson of 
the deceased, and spoke good English. He guided us to a tented 
pavilion close by the catafalque, provided us with chairs, and soon 
gave us tea and cigars. Quite a number of prominent people 
were there ; two of them had been passengers on the Parthia in 



I40 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Davawongse's suite. These spoke to us, and gave us some ex- 
planations. Presently some other foreigners arrived, — mission- 
aries and consuls. Soon the coffin, in a brass case without top or 
bottom, was put on the altar, being lifted up a foot or so. In the 
meantime priests were chanting all around. Large bundles of 
cloth were then put upon the bier, and after lying a moment 
were taken off by the priests. They were presents from the dead 
man's estate. Many of them had extra sheets and robes for a 
year. About the catafalque were tall bamboo frames, so covered 
with lanterns as to. resemble blazing pagodas. Just at dusk a 
steam barge steamed up in the canal close by, and Prince Ongnai, 
full brother of the king, and regent or second king, the first 
prince in the land, arrived, and then with a flourish another barge 
came from the palace with the sacred fire, which is never allowed 
to die out, sent by the king. " Ongnai," after passing among the 
guests with a few words for his friends and a polite greeting for 
all, lighted from this fire a piece of sandal-wood and a stick of 
resinous incense, and set fire to sandal-sticks under the bier. 
Other leading men followed him, and then flowers of sandal-wood 
were given the foreigners, and we were asked to assist. Our 
doing so seemed to please the family. Thus in one day we saw 
vultures and dogs eat one of the poor of the land, and with our 
own hands helped to burn up one of its rich and great ones. 
Soon the whole pile was in flames. 

We were invited to the house close by to dine, but declined. 
At night we again went up to see the brilliant fireworks in honor 
of the dead. All was feasting and enjoyment. Food was spread 
about for the poor. Shows and pageants were kept up for the 
public amusement. The funeral pile at night was become a mass 
of coals, all of fragrant woods. A man stood by who, with a sort 
of hooked poker, would push up the fire and pull up scraps of 
body to keep them burning. The fire is kept up for 24 hours. The 
ashes of the bones were then gathered together and kept in an urn, 
while the remainder of the ashes were taken out and scattered on 
the river, a boat solemnly floating down it for the purpose. 

The next day we were informed that the king would grant an 
audience to Col. Child to enable him to present an autograph 
letter from the President of the United States, and would then 
give us a private audience at 5 P- M, At the appointed hour, in 
full dress, we were at the royal palace. We were met at the 
grand gate by an officer, who conducted us through the courts. 
Prince Devawongse met us on the way. Passing through a file 
of household guards, we passed up the broad palace steps. The 
palace is, by the way, a long, two-story and basement Italian 
building, with a central projecting pavilion, and a pavilion at 
either end, of beautiful kiosk-form. It is of brick, cemented and 
painted in pure white. It cannot be termed magnificent, but it is 
very chaste and pure in its style and exceedingly handsome. All 



AUDIENCE WITH THE KING. 141 

the public buildings, by the way, except the city walls and gates 
or portals, are Italian in style and erected by Italian architects. 
Entering a broad and lofty vestibule, we were seated at a table 
and served with delicious tea and cigarettes. We wrote our 
names in a handsomely bound, large register, and each one his 
name and place of residence in an autograph-book, under the 
date of birth, and opposite a verse of English poetry. 

Scarcely were we through with this when a master of cere- 
monies announced that the king was ready to receive us. Ac- 
companied by Prince Devawongse, we mounted another short 
flight of steps into the grand reception-room. Through this ele- 
gant room, 100 feet long, beautifully furnished, and with walls 
ornamented with European paintings, we passed between files of 
body-guards into the king's private reception-room. This is also 
a lofty and large apartment, most tastefully furnished. Near the 
door stood Siam's celestial monarch. We were all presented and 
shaken by the hand. Mr. Child then, in a neat speech, which 
was not interpreted, presented President Cleveland's letter, a 
copy of which had already been sent in some time before ; the 
king, therefore, did not open it, but said in Siamese, interpreted 
by Devawongse, that he was much pleased to receive this auto- 
graph letter from the President of the United States, and thanked 
him for the kindly and friendly expressions in it, and requested 
the minister to convey to the President his thanks, and also to 
the Americans for their courtesy to his royal brother, when lately 
passing through the country. He then said he felt very friendly 
toward the President and the people of the United States, and 
asked us as to the health of the former. The minister's speech 
and replies were not interpreted, for Chulalanghorn understands 
and speaks English well, but will not, as a matter of etiquette, 
use to a foreigner any other than his native tongue. 

Our royal host then stepped back to the middle of the room, 
taking a chair at the head of a long business table, and with a 
pleasant word and gesture asked us to be seated. He motioned 
me to a seat immediately to his right, saying he had heard I was 
a fellow-traveller across the ocean with his brother, and that we 
had become quite good friends. The ofificial interpreter stood 
behind him, but the Prince acted in his place during the audience. 
I replied that I had that honor, and that it was a great pleasure 
to me, for I had found his Royal Highness not only a pleasant but 
very instructive compagnon dii voyage. My replies were not in- 
terpreted, and I found the king caught my remarks quite as 
readily as did his brother. He then asked what sort of a travel- 
ler his brother was. I said an admirable one, but I was forced to 
state, even in his presence, and with my apologies, that he was 
not always in a most fitting condition — in fact, was frequently 
not entirely himself, not, however, from wine, but from an over- 
indulgence in sea air and well-stirred water. The king laughed 



142 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

heartily at this and made some by-play remarks to the Prince. 
We afterward learned he had himself not long since suffered con- 
siderably from sea-sickness, and was glad to get his brother on the 
hip. He asked me if the Prince spoke my language well. I 
replied ; " Like a native, but that he was so patriotic that in his 
intercourse with the young princes and his suite he always used 
his own language ; that our rooms had been adjoining, and I 
could vouch for his sleeping and dreaming in pure Siamese; that 
he talked in his sleep." This set them into quite a loud laugh. 
He asked what relationship there was between the young gen- 
tlemen with me and myself. I told him. He then wished to 
know if they thoroughly appreciated the benefits of travelling 
with an experienced man like myself. I told him : " I could 
hardly answer ; that we had in our country an adage which was 
that ' Young folks thought old folks fools, but that old ones knew 
the young ones to be so.'" " Very good !" he said, " we have 
the same in Siamese," and then repeated it, at the same time 
turning his chair squarely to mine as if to assure me our audience 
was not at an end. " But," he continued, " how do you find the 
young gentlemen as fellow-travellers?" I replied: " I wished to 
retain the feelings and aspirations of youth as long as possible, 
and to that end preferred to associate with the young rather than 
the old." He said: "That was a most excellent idea — that the 
young should seek the companionship of the old, while the old 
should mingle with the young; that the older ones would teach 
by example and precept, while they would imbibe lessons from 
the hearts of tbe others." He wished to know out- plans for our 
continued voyage and how long we would yet be from home. I 
told him I was an American sovereign, and as such kept myself 
untrammelled in my movements, and permitted nature and cli- 
matic laws alone to control my actions. He was amused at my 
sovereignty, and said a good deal which the Prince translated, but 
which I cannot repeat, except that he hoped that I would 
bear back to my own land benefits and improved health. But 
that my sovereignty had to bend to the will of Him who gov- 
erned all. He wished to know if I was travelling merely for pleas- 
ure, or if I intended, as many did, to write of what I saw. I told 
him that I had proved the motto, " Uneasy lies the head that 
wears a crown " ; that I had borne the burdens without enjoying 
the pleasures ; I had felt the thorns without shining in the jewels 
which a crown possessed, and was travelling for rest and health. 
He replied he had heard I had for many years governed a great 
city, and that I was fortunate in being able to lay down its 
cares. I replied : " If your majesty will forgive my presumption, 
I would say that I had heard that the King of Siam worked 
too hard and attended to many details which responsible men 
might perform." Col. Child here remarked that his Ma- 
jesty was one who thought that the throne was a public 



THE KING'S CONVERSATION. 143 

trust. The king said : " Yes, it is the duty of those in 
power to make their people happy." I replied : " But when a 
trustee breaks himself down he does a wrong to his trust ; that I 
wished to report to my countrymen that the monarch whose- 
order had gone forth that no one born in his reign should be a 
slave, and who was doing his best for his people, was at the same 
time conserving his health." " Then you do write, do you ? " said 
the king. " Only for a couple of newspapers." He quickly said: 
" What you write of Siam I hope will be impartial." I told 
him " that when I looked into the Siamese sky, with its ever- 
smiling hues of soft blue, its sunsets of pearly white, changing 
and melting into tints found elsewhere only in the inside of a 
shell, I feared I would be in danger of tinting my picture with 
too much rose." The compliment seemed to please, for he had 
just before made a motion as if to terminate the audience, but he 
sat back, and asked what I thought of Siam. I told him that 
what Siam needed most was roads ; that she had none, and, 
therefore, I could not see much of the country; and then there 
were no steamer lines on the river. He then entered into quite 
a talk with the Prince as to the possibility of sending us up on a 
royal barge. But, as I before stated, this could not now be. He 
then said : " But you have seen Bangkok. How do you like it ? " 
I replied that we had a national air called "Yankee Doodle." 
That " Yankee Doodle went to town, but could not see it for the 
houses!" The Prince did not catch what I said, and asked me 
to repeat. " Ah, yes, Yankee Doodle," said the king, forgetting 
himself and speaking in English. I then continued : " I could 
hardly see the town of Bangkok for' the magnificent trees, which 
embowered it in such delicious shade that from Wat-Se-Kat I 
felt I was looking down upon miles of royal gardens and splendid 
palaces and gilded domes." The king said he was very glad I 
was pleased with what I had seen of Siam, and paused. I replied 
that I was more than pleased ; that it was the realization of my 
early dreams of rich orientalism and tropical luxuriance ! He 
said: "The climate and soil of Siam were unequalled, and, con- 
sidering the time she had been improving, she had done well ; that 
although America was yet younger, she had in her very infancy 
educated people from all lands, and could be called old even in 
her childhood ; but Siam had to build herself up, her people 
being made up from an uneducated, old land, and was, therefore, 
young in her age." I replied : "But your Majesty has touched it 
with your wand, and your land has wonderfully improved under 
your reign." The king did not talk much himself, but seemed to 
wish to get me to talk. I cannot recall near all that was said, 
but we were complimented with an audience of fully half an hour 
— two or three times longer than usual. He finally arose, wishing 
us a prosperous voyage and a happy return to our homes. He 
went with us half-way to the door, and gave me two cordial shakes 



144 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

of the hand at parting. Col. Child said as we went out : " You 
did well, Mr. Harrison. You caught the king." I must confess 
he quite caught me. 

He is of medium height, of very graceful form, admirably set 
off in his dark sacque, buttoned close up to the chin, his dark 
" panoong," and silk stockings. While of a dignity rarely met with, 
he was free from all hauteur or stiffness, but gentle and urbane, 
and was the realization of what I had often read of the character- 
istics of Oriental potentates. He is 34 years old, rather dark- 
yellowish nut-brown complexion, black mustache, and wore no 
orders of any kind. If I had met him as a traveller, I would have 
set him down as a man having wonderfully easy yet very dig- 
nified manners. He has many wives, and his first and second 
queens are his half-sisters. A few years ago he lost by drowning 
his chief queen, a full sister to the two he now has. They were 
all three full sisters of Prince Devawongse, the present Minister 
of Foreign Affairs. His marrying his half-sisters is from the cus- 
toms of the land — that no one can ascend the throne except a 
Celestial prince, and these can only be those born of the king and 
a princess. No woman is a princess except the daughter of a 
king. His brothers have wives, but not princesses. In fact 
they are not strictly married to their wives. This is to prevent 
a line of princes. The son of a prince not being the offspring 
of a regular marriage is not himself a prince. In this way 
there can be no long line of hereditary nobility to intrigue 
for the throne. The succession is fixed by the king, but from 
custom and public opinion must be from the Celestial princes. 
When we backed out of the king's presence, the boys congratu- 
lated themselves that they got out of the room without a stumble. 

Before parting with Devawongse we were asked to fix a time 
when we would dine with him. Being told to suit himself, he 
sent us invitations for the next day. His palace is within the 
walled town, has lofty, cool rooms, tastily but not richly decorated. 
The menu was extensive and the cooking good. The dining- 
room was deliciously fragrant from white jasmine and a tree 
flower resembling somewhat a tuberose, but fresher. It is a holy 
flower, and used to decorate shrines and altars in preference to 
all others. The guests were the Celestial Prince Ongnai, full 
brother of the king and the highest nobleman in the land ; Prince 
Nareth, half-brother to the king ; Prince Shwasti, also half-brother ; 
and several noblemen and officers of the army. The wines were 
good, the company fine, and, with no restraint upon any, the 
evening lasted from 7:30 to 11:30, and made it difificult for me to 
realize that we were in Siam, a far-off, and, as we had supposed, 
half-barbarian country ; in a company of gentlemen who would 
compare favorably for elegant manners and cultivated conversa- 
tion and appearance with the highest in any land. " Put not 
your trust in princes!" but certainly Prince Devawongse, simply 



SINGULAR CHINESE PROCESSION. 145 

my fellow-voyager, was as polite to me as he promised to be, and 
did all he could to make our stay in Siam pleasant, and seemed 
to regret we were compelled to hasten on. 

His brother Swasti, being minister of the police, reminds me of 
a thing showing this people off admirably. A chief of Bangkok 
police seeing at a distance one policeman leading another, sent 
for him to know why he was thus leading his fellow-officer. " Oh, 
my chief, that was all right ; the other policeman is blind, cannot 
see a thing. I was leading him to his beat." Another instance 
of refreshing innocence I heard of: During a considerable fire, a 
lady came out of her house with a box of very costly jewelry. 
Seeing a man close by, she asked if he was a policeman. Being 
told he was, she handed him her box and hurried within for 
some more valuables. She has not since been able to learn the 
number of her trusted officer, and has only two sets of bracelets 
for her ankles. 

I was pleased to hear of a thing connected with Col. Child 
which made me proud of his Southern birth. There are in Bang- 
kok some Chinamen who in some way claim the protection of our 
consulate. One of these came to our minister to get his assist- 
tance in the recovery of a slave who had run away. The Colonel 
told him his country had not long since gone through a mighty 
war to break the shackles from the limbs of slaves, and he would 

be d d if he would help to catch any one's slave unless directly 

ordered so to do by the United States State Department. 

The same day which gave us the two examples of getting 
rid of the dead also gave us a view of a Chinese procession in 
honor of some festal period which, for four days, occupied the 
thoughts of the almond-eyed Celestials of this place. Every 
thing Chinese was demoralized ; waiters at the hotels would barely 
serve us. Cooks and servants in private houses were utterly 
unreliable. A circus come to town could not more thoroughly 
upset an American village than did this the pig-tailed 80,000 in 
Siam's capital. The procession took over an hour to pass a given 
point. John Chinaman was in his most elaborate toggery. Silk 
gowns glistened in the sun ; mantles and innumerable banners 
embroidered in silk and gold glittered and flashed. Chinese wind 
instruments, in tone resembling a bagpipe ; little fiddles with 
body of bamboo not longer than a half-pint cup, yet affording 
from their two or three strings tones to reach the musical ear of 
a Chinese professor ; gongs banging and whanging. These were 
in bands of 12, and these bands to every 100 or 200 feet, 
and jolly, happy, prosperous sons of China. Some of the em- 
blems borne were decidedly curious. One was a huge dragon 
over 300 feet long, worming and squirming, its feet being legs of 
men whose bodies were lost in its abdomen ; pretty pagodas with 
bedizzened girls on their tops ; great pyramids of flowers, in the 
cups of some, a lily for example, were little real Siamese babies,, 



146 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

some not over three months old, but generally a half year. 
These poor little things were perched up and tossed aloft in the 
blazing sun. Men hoisted in palanquins and some sitting upon 
seats composed of spear heads and knives, so placed as to look as 
if they were being impaled, and through their cheeks, necks, ears, 
or arms were run the spikes of long iron spears carried by sev- 
eral men. These were ghastly sights, intended to represent the 
capturing of some horrible demons. Hour after hour these poor 
devils would be borne upon men's shoulders with these iron 
spikes nearly as large as my little finger, some straight through 
their cheeks, and held between the clinched jaws to prevent as much 
as possible the laceration by the steel. One fellow sat upon the 
blades of knives — a false motion would have sent them deep into 
his flesh ; a long spike ran through his ear — a single jarring motion 
would have given him agony. For hours and during three days 
these men underwent this torture to the huge gratification of the 
Celestial lookers-on. They were paid for this suffering and were 
a part of the show, and John wanted the value of his money. 
The king ordered that the baby part of the show be discontinued. 
Wily John Chinaman had hired Siamese babies, thus saving his 
own little ones. 

One night we were at the Princess Theatre. Like all buildings 
for spectacular entertainments in the East, this was simply of 
rough boards, and resembled the interior of a huge American 
barn. The stage extends quite a distance into the body of the 
house. Around was the parterre ; next the stage was given up 
entirely to the women ; behind and over and all around were 
galleries for men on one side, for women on the other. There 
were at least five times as many of the fair ones as of the sterner 
sex. Each gentleman, being the husband of two or more wives 
and the owner of several handmaids, is enabled to fill many seats 
by his women to his own one. The women were in some parts 
of the house in full dress ; and like the full-dressed in our own 
civilized land, wore as little dress as possible. No doubt, like our 
own fair ones, they know when concealment begins to beckon for 
peering. Some of the ladies had their little ones from one to 
five or six years old. These, too, were all in full dress ; that is, 
a couple of earrings and anklets, the balance made up of nature's 
•own satin-brown cuticle. These little fellows ran around among 
their mammas and nurses, and enjoyed themselves hugely. In a 
box next ours was a rich Chinese with his son of three or four 
years. The little fellow was smoking a large cigar as deliberately 
as did his father. 

The entire troupe, musicians and actors, in this the finest thea- 
tre in the city, belong to the proprietor. He bought them when 
young, and had trained them finely. All are women except two 
■clowns, and some of them very pretty, and all finely formed. 
The orchestra was large, I should think fully 50. The play was 



SIAMESE THEATRE. 147 

a mixture of pantomime and opera, with a little witty off-hand 
colloquial performance. The actors go through their part gener- 
ally on their haunches. Those acting the parts of slaves when mov- 
ing from one part of the stage to another, walk on their knees. 
All were exquisitely dressed in blazing vestments, but all in 
pretty naked feet. Oh, how much of God's best and most beau- 
tiful gifts to woman she hides when she covers her feet. A well- 
turned ankle and rosy toes would be such an addition to Worth's 
most elaborate toilette. The scenery does not, as with us, change 
from act to act ; but a scene, say 13 by 20 feet, is hung up at the 
rear of the stage. This tells the locality and suggests the role, 
and is changed when the act changes. At the end of each 
act all go off the stage with a grand fanfaronade of music. 
A part of the play is sung by the orchestra, each one keeping 
time to their words with naked sticks. To this the actors 
perform in pantomime. More expressive pantomimic perform- 
ance I never saw in Italy. Indeed, some of the motions were 
too realistic, and some of the poetry of the motions was injured 
by certain contortional gestures considered by these people per- 
fect. But, taken as a whole, the play was infinitely superior to 
those of the Chinese. The dialogue was sustained in a natural 
voice, and judging from the frequent bursts of laughter, the jokes 
and hits were apt and amusing. We were informed that it was 
quite as well that Mrs. Child and another foreign lady of our 
party did not understand the language, for the jests were not 
quite such as we should consider fit for polite ears. The music 
was to my ear really pretty, though somewhat monotonous, but 
with tones and cadences very charming. One instrument was 
delicious, composed of a large number of glass cups, and played 
upon by a soft leather-covered stick. 

We were forced to leave Siam too soon, for India was beckon- 
ing us, and we knew we must not fail to reach Suez in March. 
Our first and second days from Siam to Singapore were beautiful 
and gave us delight when we watched the sweet sunsets, so differ- 
ent on this sea from any we ever before saw. There was none of 
the gorgeous red-purple, yellow, and orange, and gold of our own 
unparalleled American sunsets. But, on the other hand, one 
sees the soft pearl-white of the sky, melting into an orange-yellow 
so delicate, so soft and evanescent, that one almost holds his 
breath lest it go before it is fixed upon the eye ; then this blend- 
ing into a purple-rose, as soft and melting as the tints of a beau- 
tiful woman's ear. You turn your head for a moment, and a 
light gauzy cloud has floated by, and has become a web of pink 
and rose, orange and yellow, and violet and purple, the most 
delicate of these several colors, and changing and vanishing like 
the tints on an opal's breast, or the dyes in a mother-of-pearl 
shell. The tints and coloring, while momentarily distinct, defined 
and brilliant, yet vanish so rapidly, or rather melt so quickly into 
others, that they produce the effect of softest neutral dyes. 



148 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

When we reached the parallel of Point Cambodia a heavy sea 
was rolling from the far east. The Hecate, of only 600 tons, 
rocked like a cradle. Our 250 cattle, tied in rows along the open 
deck, slid and fell and suffered badly, and we three passengers 
passed as unpleasant a night as I ever had on a sea. There was 
little rest and scarcely any sleep. The third day was overcast 
with slight rain. At noon we were on the fourth parallel, and 
were bounding in a smoother sea toward the equator. When 
the sun went down and the black night set in we saw a clearer 
horizon toward the east. I lay on the deck and watched the 
patches of brilliant starry sky steal from under the clouds, and 
before the moon rose there was over me the wondrous mass of 
blazing suns nowhere seen except within the equatorial regions. 
The milky way was swallowed up in the fulness of starlight, but 
athwart the zenith was the mighty belt of starry worlds blinking 
and twinkling in countless mass. To the southeast rose Jupiter, 
flashing in blue and diamond flame so brightly that a path of silver 
lay between him and us along the sea. Then, much farther to 
the south, came another large planet, it, too, making a broad 
pathway of light toward our ship. At 11:30 I looked three- 
quarters of a point toward the east of our stern, and could just 
see the north star, the guide and beacon for countless millions in 
the northern half of the world. He was hardly as high as my 
head above the horizon. I looked to the south, and a few points 
westward from our bow the great southern cross, seen by my 
longing eyes for the first time, burst into view. In two months 
and a few days I will have seen the light throughout 63 years, 
yet will confess to an intense boyish enthusiasm when I thus 
looked now to my right at the light set in the sky far off toward 
the south pole, and then to my left, and there hung the one over 
the northern pole — the north star, — eternal beacons lighted by 
the one mighty Maker and Ruler over all things, and throughout 
this world's mighty flight through the realms of eternal and 
boundless space, the guides and leading stars of countless millions 
of men since light was ordered ; and will yet be beacons for count- 
less millions more, until the one unknown and unknowable Ruler 
shall put out the lights, and measureless space shall be filled 
with measureless nothing. 

I watched and wondered in intensest awe — an awe too deep for 
dreams. I did not dream, I did not think. I could only sit a 
silent nothing in the midst of a silent immensity of all things, 
spread over me and under me and all around me; around and 
over me a mighty map of eternity — eternity of space and eternity 
of time. Presently a deep red spot crept over the eastern hori- 
zon, and then the moon spread over our world a gentle light. 
The stars paled, and soon nearly all had hidden behind the veil 
of light spread over the world by its silvery satellite. I looked 
and looked again, then sighed and went— to bed. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SINGAPORE— BOTANICAL GARDEN— A SAIL THROUGH THE RHIO- 
LINGA ARCHIPELAGO— ITS EXQUISITE BEAUTY- 
CHICAGO ISLANDS— THE EQUATOR. 

Bay of Bengal, near Bangoon, Burma/i, Dec. 21, 1887. 

Again I am writing while on the wing. This time aboard the 
steamship Secundra, one of a Hne which sails every Wednesday 
from Singapore to Calcutta, stopping one day at Penang and four 
at Rangoon. Travellers from China to India usually continue on 
the great mail ships to Colombo, Ceylon, and, after seeing well 
that island of spice, go to Calcutta by another ship, calling at 
Madras. We expected to follow the beaten track and take the 
P. & O. steamer on Monday. I made the present deflection for 
several reasons: First, we are desirous of having a peep at Bur- 
mah; and, secondly, of going through southern India. We hope 
now, after finishing the great tourist routes of India, to drop 
down from Bombay through the Deccan to Tuticorin near 
Cape Cormorin, and over to Ceylon, and thence directly to Suez. 
In this way we will do Ceylon the last thing in the far East ; 
thirdly, we found we were in the middle of the rainy season, the 
clouds emptying deluges two or three times a day. We would 
probably find the same climatic conditions among the cinnamon- 
groves of Ceylon, whereas the last of February will probably 
give dry weather in that locality ; and lastly, we pined to strad- 
dle the equator, which was impossible if we sailed on Monday. 
Therefore are we steaming north over beautiful seas on the east 
shore of the Bay of Bengal, but at a most disgustingly slow pace. 

Arriving at Singapore from Siam the morning of the 8th 
(Thursday) we made ourselves as comfortable as possible with 
the thermometer high in the 8o's, and with precious little breeze 
blowing. In the afternoon we called upon Major Studer (our 
kind-hearted Teutonic consul), who has been here 17 years, and 
is as full of information about this locality as he is running 
over with rheumatism- He was sent here by Grant and has 
not been removed by Bayard, and is thoroughly satisfied as to 
the shortsightedness of Congress in not making more ample 
provision for the consular service. I would be, too, were I a 
consul or minister. It is idle to say there are plenty at home 
who would gladly fill their places. That is true, for what is 

149 



I50 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

there around which the average poHtician would not take ? 
But whether the administration be of one or the other party, the 
people want good service, and want their servants in all coun- 
tries respected. This is an impossibility here in the East, with 
our consuls living as they do. If Congressmen would 
stop up the bung-hole through which the national treasury 
empties itself into the lap of mionopoly, they would not have 
to show a saving at the spigot for the purpose of deluding 
their constituents. 

Singapore is a pretty town on the southern shore of the 
island of the same name, which is almost 60 miles in circum- 
ference, and is separated by a narrow channel from Jahore, 
the extreme southern land of the Malayan peninsula and of 
the Asiatic continent. Approaching the town one sees a long 
line of two-storied, colonnaded hongs or business-houses, part 
white and part of pale blue. Flanking this at one end is a long 
esplanade covered with fine trees, and on the other a couple 
of miles of docks and factories. Behind rise hills 100 or 200 
feet high. On one of these are the long, white houses of parlia- 
ment, half lost in verdure. The towm is a thriving one, doing 
a large business, and possesses great wealth, much of which is in 
the hands of the Chinese. These people are the Jews of the 
East — persevering, indefatigable, and shrewd. They work and 
make money, and it matters not whether their gains be large 
or small, they lay by something. They get the highest wages 
possible to them, but they will accept any wage rather than be 
idle. They have not graduated in that social school which 
teaches that there is a dignity in labor which makes it more 
honorable to starve or go in rags in idleness than to work at a 
pay deemed insufficient. The result is, while the natives in many 
lands are strutting with gaunt bellies, John is soberly at work and 
q^uietly filling his purse. Every town from northern Burmah 
south and throughout the vast Indian archipelago has already 
fallen, or is fast falling, into his hands. Even the farms and 
gardens about the towns are becoming his. The little white ants 
eat up the houses throughout the Eastern tropics. They burrow 
into the heart of every sill, joist, and rafter. They leave the out- 
side untouched, but suddenly the house tumbles in ; the timbers 
have become simple shells. The Chinese are the human white 
ants of the east. They burrow or live in the light or in the dark, 
and are fast eating out the heart and substance of foundation, 
joist, and framework of the industrial fabric of many people. I 
do not like John, but I fear I am nursing a great admiration for 
his sturdy qualities, and am constantly amused by the quiet way 
in which he wins in the battle for bread. 

When the //^(r<2/<:' dropped her anchor in port on the 8th she was 
immediately boarded by boatmen to carry us and our traps ashore. 
We always make our bargain in advance, and asked how much. 



TWILIGHT AND DA WN. 151 

"One dollar and a half," said a stately Indian ; " a dollar," said 
another ; both too high. But not a cent would the dignified 
gentlemen drop. A couple of Chinamen stepped up and quietly- 
said 60 cents, and before we could answer had our baggage on 
their shoulders. The Indians smiled grimly, and said: "China- 
men cheat you," and stalked off in half-naked dignity. John did 
try to get some more from us at the hotel, but when we refused 
he went off contented. I have had a half-dozen or more exam- 
ples of this kind. They are the cashiers, clerks, and porters of all 
the banks and great houses throughout this land, and are found 
reliable beyond any other people. I do not like them, but I can- 
not help admiring them, and if I were an Oriental I would fear 
them. 

The island of Singapore is said to have a population of from 
160,000 to 200,000. About 2,000 are Europeans. Of the remain- 
der, more than half are Chinese, a third Malay, the balance peo- 
ples from different parts of India, Java, and other islands. The 
place is on the highway from Europe to China through the Suez 
Canal, and has since the opening of the latter become of great 
commercial value. The little rajahship of Jahore is governed, by 
grace of her imperial Majesty's ministers, by a " sultan," who be- 
longs to England body and soul, and is holding his dominion for 
its absolute dropping into England's lap whenever she may deem 
it for her good. In the meantime he most hospitably receives 
all Englishmen and Americans who have a desire to air their heels 
before a monarch. Of all the tuft-hunters I know, Americans are 
the worst. O Lord 1 how the smile of a king or a prince does 
melt far down into our hearts ! With a lord we are happy, but a 
prince wafts us off into the seventh heaven. Like all the balance, 
Johnny, Willie, and I would have gone to pay our court to the 
tawn}^ little potentate, but, unfortunately, he was up in Malacca. 

Jahore and Singapore islands are going quite extensively into 
coffee planting. The Liberian plant, the one adopted, is one of 
the most beautiful of shrubs. It has the densest of foliage, and is 
of the richest green. The berry, like the fig, grows from the 
large branches directly, and not from the twigs of the coffee tree. 
The mass of pods clustering about a branch is wonderful. Clove 
plantations, another of the industries here, are very beautiful. 
The tree is conical, with pale-green, waxy leaves; the young 
shoots, however, being of a purple pink, at a little distance look out 
as if abloom. 

The morning after our arrival we were up a little after five. A 
streak of light had appeared in the east, which rapidly extended 
into a mild dawn, and before half of the hour had passed it was 
bright, and yet the sun did not rise until after six. I cannot 
understand why the tropical twilight is so short and the dawn so 
much longer. When the sun sets darkness, like an exhalation 
from the earth, immediately spreads its panoply over all nature. 



152 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Scarcely have the sun's rays departed from the hills before the 
stars peep out, and but for their light all would be in a few min- 
utes pitchy black. Yet the next morning the chickens come from 
their roosts a half-hour before sunrise, and the most delicious 
time of the day is opened. The same causes which make twilight 
short should do the like for the dawn. With the dawn at Singa- 
pore appear the horses of the rich Europeans, led for exercise 
about the esplanade by their half-naked Malay grooms. Then 
come Chinamen, pacing along with a Newfoundland-dog gait, car- 
rying suspended to the two ends of bamboo poles baskets of 
vegetables for market, and near by is a string of carts drawn by 
beautiful hump-backed oxen, with gray or tawny hides, horns 
pointed almost straight up, and looking at us with eyes as soft as 
those of a fawn. The drivers of these carts are Clings, from the 
Madras country ; straight as North American Indians, generally 
very tall, with long, black hair, and skins of all shades, from the 
very dark-brown to a sooty black ; their features are generally finely 
chiselled, and their forms superb. How their black skins, well 
oiled, shine in the morning sun ! They wear only a skirt about 
their loins, and look like ApoUos cut from ebony. They are the 
workers upon the streets, and when the heat of noon is on 
them their sweating shoulders and backs look as if they had been 
polished. 

Immediately after breakfast, which throughout the East for for- 
eigners is about nine o'clock, we went to the botanical gardens, 
some two miles out of town. Our road was through cocoa-nut 
trees and orchards of mangoes. The gardens were a delight to us, 
and we were enabled to learn the names of many beautiful trees 
we had seen but were not able to designate. The garden is 
large, — a part a handsome park, and a part devoted to experi- 
mental tree and vegetable growing, and a still larger part yet a 
ta'ngled mass of jungle. I wish I could properly describe the trees 
and flowers. There were clumps of sago palms, their mighty 
leaves rattling in musical measure as they were swayed back and 
forth by the gentle breeze. The Malay wine-palm, with great 
leaves of most delicate green, looked cool and refreshing. Wide- 
spreading spathalodia, clothed in a mass of great red-orange, cup- 
like flowers ; large bushes, not labelled, of almost solidly growing 
flowers, looking like huge golden chalices; cocoa-nut trees, with 
a hundred nuts hanging under their spreading fronds, resembling 
huge green roc's eggs; and by their side the slender betel trees, 
with clusters of nuts not larger than bantam eggs. And see 
yonder low spreading tree, not 25 feet high, and yet shading 100 
feet of soil. What bright leaves ! Ah, it is the gum copal from 
Africa. Fine trees of acacia flamboyant, their leaves as beautiful 
as the most delicate ferns, and their tops a-blaze in golden bloom. 
Ponds of victoria regina, its leaves resembling mighty platters 
spread for a feast of Titans, and with sweet-scented pink flowers 



BOTANICAL GARDEN. JOHN BLAIR. 153 

a foot across for titanic boutonnieres. Ponds of pink lotus, more 
bright far than the Hlies which Solomon could not vie with, and 
near by a dozen coal-black swans, so royally proud of their crim- 
son bills, and graceful small water-fowl, which would shame even 
an English sportsman of his desire to kill. But how the boys did 
enjoy the hedges of wild mimosa, which folded its leaves under 
the gentlest touch. They carried them afar, and in fancy they 
could see the sweet coyness of a dark or blue-eyed girl in their 
far-off homes. Though this park and garden were so interesting, 
yet, when we at one time got lost, and had to make our way 
through a newly cut path in a dense chaparral, we could not help 
remembering that man-eating tigers swim the narrow channel be- 
hind the island, and carry off one or more hundred natives every 
year, and that not long since a python, 28 feet long, was killed just 
after he had swallowed a pig weighing 130 pounds; and, worse 
yet, that we were in the belt of the world for venomous snakes, 
which cause the death of over 150,000 people every year in India. 

Saturday we went to see the machine shops of the Tanjong 
Pagar Dock Company. I had a note to Capt. John Blair, the 
general manager and superintendent. He went out of his office 
with us. It rained. John offered a part of his umbrella. "Oh, 
don't mind, there 's one near," and, sure enough, a good-looking 
Indian stepped up and held an umbrella over him as he walked. 
That umbrella is always ready in sunshine or rain, and the pro- 
tected man never has to hoist it. The captain said it was a very 
part of himself. I informed him that I had a great desire to 
cross the equator, but could not spare ten days to go to Batavia, 
and wished to hire a launch to take us down. In the course of the 
conversation England's beneficial rule in India was mentioned. 
" And yet," I remarked, " she keeps her next neighbor isle, poor 
Ireland, in a constant ferment and a blot upon her escutcheon, 
and all because the Englishmen could not or would not compre- 
hend the Irish character." To my surprise and delight I found I 
had at last met a Briton who was a Gladstone man — the first one 
I have seen since we sailed from Vancouver. I have felt my way 
again and again, but every Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman 
I have seen in the East either was or pretended to be an intense 
Tory. They nearly all depend more or less upon the ruling party 
at home, and many of them speak of Parnell as if he were a regular 
anarchist, and pronounce Gladstone an infernal scoundrel. But 
burly, handsome John Blair, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, I found 
to be an enthusiastic admirer of England's great Liberal leader; 
this was probably the secret of his telling me to be ready at 
Johnston's pier at 11 o'clock Monday, and he would have a tug 
or a launch there for us to run to the equator. 

Sunday, in the rain, we drove out to Major Studer's bungalow. 
He lives in a beautiful spot, shaded with tropical verdure. But 
the air was as heavy as it is in a glass fernery. Tropical verdure 



154 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

is a glorious tiling, but I begin to yearn for one good sniff of 
frozen wind. 

At II o'clock Monday, with our satchels and some hampers of 
solids and fluids, in a launch 40 feet long, with three Malay sea- 
men, two Chinese engineers, and all under a marine engineer, Mr. 
Haderup, a Dane, we steamed from Singapore in quest of that 
line which is the earth's girdle, and yet sits so loosely about her 
waist that it continuously, through the ages, grows bigger and 
bigger under the gentle pressure. I know this will appear a 
wild-goose chase, or worse. But we were only 70 odd miles from 
the equator. We wanted to put those 70 odd miles behind us, 
and to feel we were on the southern hemisphere. Even that 
sturdy Scot, John Blair, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, did not look 
at me as if he thought me a fool when I named my longing. He 
saw our youthful fire, and became himself enthused, and gave us 
a launch. 

Across the Singapore strait, and spreading over the sea to the 
south and to the east of Sumatra, lies the Rhio-Linga archipelago. 
The islands of Battam and Bintang, both quite large, lie along 
the strait. Behind these are a vast number of small islands, said 
to be 1,000, of all sizes, from those containing several thousand 
acres down to tiny ones not many feet in diameter. Some of the 
larger ones have hills several hundred feet high ; the smaller ones 
are comparatively new coral structures. After passing through a 
group of these there comes an open sea, probably 15 miles across, 
where a new group similar to those at the north lie like emerald 
gems on the water, and run down to and about Linga. These 
all belong to the Dutch, but are under the immediate sway of 
Sultan Abooal Rachman and his father. Rajah Mohammed Joe- 
seep. They acknowledge the supremacy of the king of Holland, 
who has at Rhio a " Resident," who keeps watch and ward for 
his king. 

Capt. Blair told me at parting that we might not get much 
pleasure from our introduction to the equator, but that we would 
have the most beautiful sail in the world. But even this left me 
rather unprepared for the beauty we were to enjoy. Our launch 
was swift. The day was glorious. Fleecy clouds were scattered 
over the heavens from zenith to horizon — not enough to shut out 
the soft blue sky, but every few moments veiling the sun and 
sheltering us from his too hot rays. The speed of our craft gave 
us a gentle breeze, and, above all, we were in the highest spirits. 
We entered the archipelago through a narrow pass opposite Singa- 
pore, and hour after hour were in the midst of scenes of surpass- 
ing loveliness. Now we were on a broad lake a mile in diameter, 
mirroring upon its placid waters the islands around. These were 
fringed all along the water's edge with mangrove trees of beauti- 
ful green, their roots standing in the water six to ten feet high 
like spider legs beneath the bodies of the trees. They looked 



A SAIL THROUGH RHIO-LINGA ARCHIPELAGO. 155 

like monster insects, and when the swell on the glass-smooth 
water from our little craft would run toward them, their thousands 
of long legs would be reflected, and would bend and dance upon 
the mirrory waves. Above and behind this fringe the islands 
would lift 50, 100, or 200 feet, clothed in dense forests, their leafy- 
tops so thick and bunched that they looked like masses of emerald 
spun and then woven into tufted fabrics. Some tropical travellers 
speak of the sameness of the green about the equator, and declare 
it greatly inferior to the variety shown in northern zones. So far 
I have not found this well founded — certainly not in these 1,000 
islands. There was every tint, from pale pea-green to one that 
was almost black in its waxy depth ; from the ashy dye of the 
olive leaf to the transparent emerald green caught from the breast 
of a breaking sea wave. 

From the fairy lakes there would apparently be no outlet— all 
was landlocked. But see yonder little creek! We bend into it, 
and scudding along a narrow green sea-river, lo ! the creek 
spreads, and there before us lifts a conical little island, with a 
narrow shore-line of golden sands. Then into another lake stud- 
ded with little islets, some barely large enough to furnish foot- 
hold for a single tree, whose spreading branches kiss the rippling 
waters beneath. One could almost fancy he saw a boat of 
mother-of-pearl shell moored to a twig, with a fairy occupant 
sleeping in the shade. Now and then we passed close to native 
villages on some of the larger islands, with low palm-walled and 
palm-roofed huts lifted upon bamboo piles, and children laughing 
and romping in the cocoa-nut groves in which the village would 
be nestled. Every hut in this land is lifted up as a protection 
against venomous serpents and carnivorous beasts, and for cool- 
ness. Tigers swim from island to island, and have a tooth for 
young human flesh. 

Sometimes the villages were piled out over the water ; about 
these, tiny fishing canoes, with a shining native in each, were to 
be seen gliding about and among the spidery roots of the man- 
grove trees, through which the rays of the sun never pierce. If 
it be not the loveliest sail in the world, it was certainly the most 
so of any I had enjoyed. The Thousand Islands of the St. 
Lawrence and the inland sea of Japan are as much inferior to 
this as they are superior to the islands in the upper Mississippi. 

England may claim to hold the golden land of India, but Hol- 
land holds the gems of the sea. 

Rhio we found a very pretty place. It has been the seat of a 
Resident for 102 years, and the houses of the Dutch inhabi- 
tants, perhaps loo people, have an air of sedate comfort not seen 
in any other place we have visited. I had a letter to the Resi- 
dent, Mr. Halewijn, from the Dutch Consul-General at Singa- 
pore. In our flannel shirts we did not feel at liberty to call. 
But, passing by his house, we saw him in his grounds in light 



156 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

dishabille. We thereupon ventured to go in and introduce our- 
selves. We were received most cordially, and went upon the 
cool veranda, floored with light Italian marble tiles. Here we 
partook of a collation. The sun dropped behind the curtain of 
the west and darkness came suddenly on, when servants lighted the 
swinging lamps and we found ourselves in one of the most charm- 
ing tropical residences one can conceive of. A lofty veranda, 50 to 
60 feet long and, say, 20 odd deep. Behind this a salon or par- 
lor of same size, and separated from the veranda only by open 
columns. Behind this the bedrooms and the offices, all on one 
floor. The ceilings were lofty, and the vv'hole floored in Italian 
marbles. Nothing can exceed it for chaste and cooling design. 
We were most cordially invited to stay and dine, but we felt we 
could not accept in the garb we wore. 

Imagine our dismay (that is, of the boys), and my pleasure, 
when Miss Halevvijn, a very pretty young lady, dressed in ele- 
gant evening costume, entered and was introduced. She came 
to honor us, but I suspect was dressed for a handsome young 
gentleman from Java, who shortly called, I suppose having pre- 
viously left his card. He had come over on a steamer plying to 
Singapore. We spent a most charming hour and left with re- 
gret, but we knew dinner must be nearly ready. His Excellency 
gave me photos of the Sultan, of the Rajah, whose palace is on 
a small island a half-mile off Rhio, and one of himself. 

We slept that night at a little hotel which is supported by the 
government, for travel is rare. I will here make a note of two 
things. The bread was most delicious — I mentioned it, and was 
told the " Resident " had given orders that if the bread of the 
village should be at any time bad he would punish the baker. 
We threw up our hats for the good-sense of the Resident of his 
Majesty of Holland. 

The other point is this : At Singapore and in this hotel we had 
no top sheets on the beds. No one sleeps under any other cover 
than the mosquito bar ; but lengthwise on the bed is a firm bol- 
ster three or four feet long. This is to lay the leg or arm, or 
both, over, so as to permit free circulation of air and to keep the 
sleeper cool. It is a Javanese-Dutch invention, and is called a 
" Dutch wife." A strange misnomer, if my recollection of Dutch 
wives be not at fault. For I certainly never saw one in flesh and 
blood whose contact could possibly keep a bed-fellow cool in hot 
weather. But whether misnamed or not I cordially commend 
the inanimate " Dutch wife " to every man in a hot climate. 

The next morning very early, while our tanks were being filled 
with fresh water — the launch could not use that of the sea — we 
strolled about the town. It is certainly a charming place for one 
who cares not for contact with the world, to spend his days in, 
and carried me back in memory to Robinson Crusoe, and the 
Swiss Family Robinson. Not that one sees no people, for the 



WE WERE ON THE EQUATOR. 157 

town has several thousand inhabitants — a considerable quarter 
is built out over the sea tenanted exclusively by the Chinese, — 
but on account of the delicious morning atmosphere and the 
fine tropical fruits. With the exception of the Chinese quarter 
the bulk of the town is of scattered houses among groves of 
palm and mango and mangostine. We ate mangoes and man- 
gostines, the two famed fruits of the East, and ripe in India 
proper only in the spring. This was to me a fine sensation. 
I am a great lover of fruit, and would go far to taste a new 
and good one, and had feared I should not have a chance at 
these two. They were freshly plucked, and yet cool from the 
heavy dew. We also drank the cool water from green cocoa- 
nuts, just brought down from their nests above. This was not 
all new to us, but it was the first experiment with one we 
knew was just gathered. The balmy breeze coming in from 
the north was simply perfect. 

We were soon steaming off toward the Linga group of 
islands, separated from those of Rhio by a somewhat open sea 
of 15 to 20 miles. The day was again fine. Pretty fish were 
leaping and skipping upon the waters, which were barely rip- 
pled ; one leaped aboard. The northern group of islands began 
to sink below the horizon, and then those to the south to rise 
up like little specks in the air, for the mirage so lifted them 
that they seemed to float several feet above the sea. Out of 
the sea they would grow as if by magic. Then they would 
take form and other more distant ones would break out of the 
shining, far-off waters. In three hours we were threading 
through another thousand isles and living over again the de- 
lights of the day before. 

About one o'clock our Malay captain pointed to an island to 
the east of the northern end of Linga, and called it " Bulu 
Bleeding," and told us it was the middle of the world. How 
I wished it were midnight. Then we could have taken note of 
the stars in the zenith, and could have called them up hereafter 
as witnesses of this, our first glide upon the southern hemisphere. 
Onward we sailed, our prow still pointed to the south pole, only 
a little over 1 2,000 miles away. We reached a point, and felt that 
there, in our frail barge, only a thickness of one inch of oak plank 
between us and eternity, we were upon that magic line which 
every school-boy knows of, which countless billions of human 
people have crossed, and yet no single one has seen. A mighty 
belt, 25,000 miles long, of intangible breadth, and yet so powerful 
that ocean currents and vast sea-rivers, compared with which the 
Amazon, the Mississippi, and the Yang-tse are but feeble brooks, 
are turned and bent and forced to change their courses and to flow 
off for thousands of miles, carrying health and wealth, warmth 
and thaw, to the far-off frozen continents of the north and south. 
A line — a mere intangible creation of the brain, — it speaks to the 



158 A -RACE WITH THE SUJST. 

sea, and says in whispered tones : " Thus far and no farther shalt 
thou go ! " and its whispered words are imperial law, and are 
obeyed. The howHng winds rush from the icy caves of the poles, 
carrying death upon their frozen Avings, but far away the genie of 
this line lifts up a gossamer web so light that Herschell's mighty 
lens could not reveal a single one of its meshes ; and yet, before 
this phantom screen the storm-fiend bows his head, slinks back 
into his frozen lair, and the borean storm melts into a gentle 
breeze. A zephyr comes from the sweet zones of the north or of 
the south ; it is laden with the breath of spicy groves, and is 
redolent with the sighs of fairies bred in the cup of the honey- 
suckle and fed upon petals of the rose. It touches this phantom 
line with its rosy-tipped fingers, and is hurled back in frightful 
change, and is sent crashing and slaying in the monster fury of 
cyclone and typhoon. Far away in the dimness of my boyhood 
days I had dreamed and wondered if I should ever stand upon 
the equator. My boyhood has long since been spent ; my man- 
hood is fast going ; but at last, at last my dream is reality ! We 
stop the engine and float upon the gently rippling sea ; we dream 
a sweet short dream, and feel that our barge is moored to the 
mighty girdle of the world. We dream and dream, and with a 
sigh change our course and tear ourselves away. 

We bend again to the north. We leave the tall mountain of 
Linga behind. We pass close to a more than usually pretty 
island of a few hundred acres and some 150 feet high in its loftiest 
point. There is no evidence of its being inhabited. We try to 
land, but find treacherous coral reefs a few feet below the surface 
at each point we attempt, and are about to abandon our design, 
when we see two tiny canoes stealing along at a distance. We 
steam towards them and call them to us. They are native fisher- 
men from an island near by, and pilot us to a point where we run 
within a hundred yards of the shore. Then, one by one, we, with 
Haderup, go off in their boats. The little canoe sank to within 
two inches of the surface under my 200 and odd pounds. We are 
told the island has no name and no inhabitants. We wander 
about the beach gathering beautiful little shells and bits of coral 
not too heavy to carry home as souvenirs. There were some fine 
specimens of the negro-head or brain corals, and some with large 
branching antlers. We had to leave them ; they were too heavy. 
We amused ourselves watching the little hermit-crabs chasing 
about with shell-houses over them. The crab finds a little conch 
or periwinkle-formed shell which suits his fancy ; he eats the 
mussel out of his home and backs himself into it, tail foremost, 
and lives there the balance of his days, or until he grows too big 
for his stolen house, when he goes out to steal a bigger one. 
They stick their feet out of the opening, and move nearly as fast 
as they do without the shell. When attacked or alarmed they 
draw in their bodies and barely the large claws are visible. When 



WE CHRISTEN AN ISLAND. 159 

backed in, their two large claws so perfectly fit the mouth of the 
shell that one can scarcely realize that it was not made for its 
inmate Some of these shells, being very pretty, we wanted ; we 
put them into our pockets; the little robber crabs, finding them- 
selves in dangerous quarters, came out of their houses and crawled 
from our pockets. Some of the shells so tenanted are not larger 
than small snail shells, others are as large as an apple. 

How we hated to tear ourselves away from this charming spot ! 
The strand was only a few yards wide, a mass of coral sands and 
beautiful shells, and broken corals of various sizes. A high 
bluff lifted from this, a part of it of purple rocks, of considerable 
boldness; lofty trees hung down from the bluffs. Their large 
branches were covered with several varieties of orchids and 
trailing vines. Low palms and plants with huge spikes like the 
aloe made the jungle almost impenetrable. We dare not attempt 
to penetrate it ; we knew not what venomous reptiles might 
be hiding among them. Our Malays said there were none. A 
pretty little stream trickled down the bluff, giving us cool, pure 
water. It, however, was not perennial, but flowed only in the 
rainy season ; otherwise the island -would have been inhabited. 
We ate a little lunch and drank to loved ones on the other side of 
the globe. We thought it probable that we were the first white 
men whose feet had ever trod this island. Why not take posses- 
sion of it in the name of the United States ? But we had no flag. 
We attempted to improvise one. We cut strips of red and blue 
paper in which our wine and beer bottles were wrapped. We 
pinned these to a large sheet of white paper, but we could not 
make the stars. Luckily I had in my satchel a piece of paper 
with the Chicago seal and motto printed upon it. We fastened 
it to our flag. But this was hardly Uncle Sam's ensign. We 
resolved this should, for the time being at least, be the Chicago 
flag. We fastened it to a tree quite securely. Then we all took 
a pull at the claret bottle, and pouring some upon the soil, called 
the island "Chicago," and formally took possession of it in the 
name of our own proud city. To seal the matter we fired a 
volley of 38 shot from our two revolvers and my little two- 
barrelled Derringer. We left the flag. Long may it stick to the 
far-off " Chicago " near the equator in the Rhio-Linga archipel- 
ago ! We were then paddled aboard, and as the sun was hurrying 
toward our own land we steamed for port nearly 80 miles 
away. We drew into Rhio for water. We called upon the Resi- 
dent for a moment, and told him we had named one of his 
islands after our own proud city. He was as much pleased as 
amused. All night we sailed, not among the islands, but the 
shorter way, followed by larger craft through the broader straits. 
The boys lay down and slept. Mr. Haderup and I dozed in cat- 
naps, and watched the stars. There was no moon, and the 
heavens about midnight were ablaze with stars. The clouds all 



i6o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

disappeared. The pole-star was just visible on the horizon at 
the north. The true and the false cross rolled around in their 
little circuits far on the southern horizon. The Magellan clouds 
were seen by me for the first time — yellow luminous circles of 
cloud-dust far to the south. Orion and Sirius rode across the 
zenith, and mighty Jupiter shone forth in resplendent brightness — 
large and brighter than a full moon. It was a glorious night, 
following two glorious days. We reached the pier near our hotel 
at 5: 15, just as the dawn broke out of its hiding-place in the east. 
We had enjoyed two glorious days and a glorious night. We 
had stood over the equator. The boys had not slid down upon it, 
as they threatened to do. But all three of us had been filled with 
fresh enthusiasm. Even Mr. Haderup, who had crossed the line 
many a time, caught the contagion, and brought us his photo on 
the ship when she sailed. In the forenoon I went to Captain 
Blair's ofiice to pay for our pleasure. He refused to accept a 
cent, but permitted me to leave a small sum to his men. He 
seemed very much to enjoy the pleasure he had afforded us, and 
when he gave my hand a warm grasp with his good-by, he said : 
" Stand up for Gladstone." "I will," I replied, "and for Parnell 
and Ireland too." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

BURMAH— PAGODAS— WORKING ELEPHANTS— THE IRRAWADDY 

RIVER— PAGAHN WITH 9,999 PAGODAS— MANDALAY— 

EXQUISITE EDIFICES— THE BURMESE. 

Calcutta, January 3, 1888. 

We sailed the afternoon of the 14th of December, 1887, from 
Singapore, for Rangoon in Burmah. Had a delightful smooth sea 
to Penang, at the northern end of the strait of Malacca, where we 
stopped for several hours. This is one of England's colonies, and 
an important point both for national and commercial purposes. It 
is on an island some 40 odd miles in circumference with a popu- 
lation of a hundred and odd thousand, mostly Chinese and Malays, 
a few thousand Indians and 100 or 200 Europeans. We vis- 
ited its botanical gardens and water-fall. The latter is very 
pretty ; a good-sized stream coming from a mountain over 2,000 
feet high in the centre of the island, tumbles several hundred 
feet — about 200 being in three cascades. It furnishes the 
town with fair water. At the fall we saw for the first time wild 
monkeys. They were springing from bough to bough on the 
trees, like frisky squirrels, and were some the size of large cats, 
others as large as good-sized terriers. After playing a while they 
would stop, and, like true monkeys, go to catching fleas from each 
other. One had a baby in her arms ; this did not prevent her 
leaping 10 to 20 feet. 

The climb of 2,200 feet to the top of the hills was well paid for 
by the magnificent view. The strait with its many islands and the 
mainland beyond with its large cocoa-nut groves and mountain 
background made a picture of unusual beauty. No voyageiir 
should miss it. The weather thence continued fine and the sea 
smooth — about as warm as a mild May day in Chicago. 

On the 20th we anchored at Rangoon, the capital of British or 
lower Burmah, which fell into England's lap in 1852. At that 
time it was a poor place, only celebrated for its great pagoda. It 
lies on the Irrawaddy, about 35 miles from the mouth and has 
doubled its population several times within the past 35 years ; it 
is the great shipping port of the two Burmahs ; doing a trade of 
nearly $100,000,000 a year. In rice exportation it stands to the 
world as Odessa did, and Chicago does in wheat, and sent abroad 
last year not much under r,ooo,ooo tons. It also exports vast 

161 



i62 • A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

quantities of " kutch," the brown dye which is supposed to pre- 
serve nets and sails from rot. This dye is from a sort of gum 
obtained by boiHng down the heart wood of a species of acacia. 
Hides, teak timber, and horns are also exported largely. There 
are about 400 Europeans residing here. They have handsome 
bungalows surrounded by large grounds ; move in considerable 
style, and do their business in fine houses. Some of the Chinese 
have substantial places of business. The remainder of the town 
is of frail light frame huts, with walls of plaited bamboo, and 
roofed with palm thatch or leaf shingling. 

The first thing we did was to visit the Schway Dagohr Pyar, 
or Golden Pagoda. This is one of the most sacred of the Bud- 
dhist monuments and shrines of Asia, and is claimed to be over 
2,000 years old. In it are several of Buddha's hairs and other 
relics, and under its foundations are said to be vast treasures 
deposited in ages past by those who desired to obtain immortal 
" merit " by their gifts to the Buddhist god. Here I will state 
that a " pagoda," or " pyar," is not a temple, or of itself a place 
of worship, but is simply an offering to God. It is promised that 
whoever erects one escapes all loathsome transmigration after 
death, and reaches an immortality of absolute rest — a species of 
eternal death in life or life in death, or rather a tranquillity so 
complete that its serenity I cannot separate from the idea of 
death. The mere building of these edifices does not win this 
ineffable rest or condition of " nirvana," but it prevents any deca- 
dence of the soul after death, and thus enables a man in some 
near future existence, by a life of purity, to obtain the condition. 
A man may live the greater portion of his life in purity, but one 
or more backslidings may send his soul after his death into some 
of the more degraded animals, and then thousands of years may 
be passed before it again enters a human being, when a life of 
piety can again be commenced. All of this danger is avoided 
by building a proper pyar. This induces men to accumulate 
wealth and to spend it all in one of these pious offerings. The 
result is there are thousands upon thousands of them in the land. 
There are said to be 25,000 within a few miles of the Irrawaddy. 

The Golden Pagoda of Rangoon stands upon a hill in the edge 
of the town. About 170 feet up from its base, the hill is levelled 
off into a platform 800 feet square. In the centre of this stands 
the main structure. It is octagonal at its base, with a diameter of 
over 450 feet. This runs in, by a succession of terraces or high 
steps, a hundred or more feet, giving it a bell-shape. From the 
shoulder of the bell springs another circular member, also in the 
bell form, but more steep ; then another. On it lifts a tall, thin, 
four-sided lantern, on which rests the " htee," or open-work metal- 
lic receptacle for sacred mementos. The "htee" is surmounted 
by a half-open metallic umbrella. The whole height from the 
platform is 370 feet. Around the base are 56 small pagodas 



THE GREAT PAGODA. 163 

about 30 feet high. The whole of the main structure is solid, of 
well-burned brick, covered over with cement plaster, and gilded 
from foundation to pinnacle. The upper half is freshly gilt, the 
scaffolding being removed while we were there. At a distance 
the whole, when the sun is sinking, looks like a mountain of gold. 
The htee is said to be of solid gold and studded with real gems, 
and was erected by a late king at a cost of $250,000. 

To repair an ordinary pagoda does not work "merit" for the 
one making the repair, but the merit is relegated to the original 
founder. But any repairs to this pagoda, and to three others in 
the kingdom, avail for " merit " to the repairer. The result is 
these three are kept in good condition. Around the platform are 
a number of smaller pagodas, and many chapels and kyoungs 
or temples for worship. These are filled with statues of Buddha 
in gilded plaster or white alabaster. Many of them are much 
larger than life. The kyoungs are of wood, — some of two only, 
others of seven stories. These latter taper inward as they rise, 
each story receding behind the one below, and each being also of 
less height than the one under it. They, too, are surmounted by a 
lantern-shaped member and an umbrella, and are a mass of beau- 
tiful carvings — fringes of net pattern, scrolls of flower pattern, 
rows of little figures, men, animals, and birds, all of wood, carved 
with a free hand, and generally very graceful in spite of their 
grotesque postures. When I say these structures are often seven 
stories in height, I refer entirely to the apparent exterior archi- 
tecture, for within they are open from top to bottom. The 
kyoungs invariably have a pagoda attachment, either of the 
conical form and of brick or a tall wooden building with the 
many stories, and the metallic htee, or umbrella, surmounting the 
whole. The kyoungs oftentimes consist of many buildings, and 
are a species of monastery, in which the priesthood live and devote 
themselves to study and holy meditation. A pagoda, however, 
may have, and in the greater number of cases, has no kyoung 
attachments. They are simply and purely offerings, and fre- 
quently have the ashes of the founder buried beneath them and 
occasionally some so-called relics of Buddha stored in the 
htee. They are often built on uninhabited and uninhabitable 
spots. 

Every Burman has to pass through the priesthood. High and 
low, rich and poor must don the " yellow robe," shave the head, 
and live upon alms during a more or less lengthy period of life, 
generally, I think, three years. Even kings are not exempt. 
Little yellow-robed boys are constantly seen going from house to 
house with their rice-pots in quest of food for their respective 
kyoungs. These are novitiates learning their humanities, and do not 
generally continue in the order. Some however remain for years and 
many for life. The latter escape the degradation of bestial trans- 
migration, and if they be good " pohn-gyees" (priests), have a fair 



i64 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

chance of soon entering upon a state of nirvana — that is to say, 
bHssful, eternal rest or conscious, comtemplative death. After 
our return from Mandalay we spent several hours at the Golden 
Pyar, now resplendent in its new garment of gold. So thor- 
oughly well-proportioned is it, that at first one does not realize its 
vast size or great height. The view from it is very fine. The city 
lies nearly veiled in tropical trees, and immediately around is a 
large park with fine drives and lakes studded with pretty islands. 
These lakes cover many acres ; are irregular in shape and artificial 
in construction. They were made long since by throwing dykes 
across some ravines, and are the reservoirs for the city, furnishing 
an abundant supply of pure water, carried in pipes and available 
in street hydrants, but without much head. 

Early the next day after our first arrival in the city, while yet 
cool, we visited one of the decided lions of the city — the work- 
ing elephant. Formerly these were very numerous, being the 
heavy workers in timber-yards and great saw-mills. Machinery 
has now supplanted them in all establishments run by foreigners. 
In each of the native mills, however, where small orders are filled, 
two of the noble beasts yet perform the heavy labor which human 
hands unassisted could scarcely manage. We visited some of 
these the second time on our return from up country, and were 
greatly interested. The elephants draw the logs many of them 
three feet in diameter and 30 to 40 feet long, from the river, pile 
them up in systematic order, and when they are needed roll them 
to the ways and assist in. adjusting them for the saw. Lumber is 
not here sawed into boards, but the slab is taken off and the good 
stuff left in square timber to be ripped up into boards where con- 
sumed, oris cut into scantling or studding. This is done both for 
home consumption and for exportation. After the log is thus cut, 
the elephant goes among the machinery, takes the slabs away, and 
then carries the good timber and piles it up or lays it gently upon 
the ox-carts to be hauled off. A carpenter while we were present 
wanted lumber from a particular log which was under several 
others. One of the monsters rolled the upper logs off and pushed 
the chosen stick to the mill. The way was not clear — the log 
butted against the others. He pushed these aside and guided his 
piece through them with a sagacity almost human. His stick 
became wedged. He pushed and tugged ; it would not budge, but 
at a whispered word from the mahout and the promise of a bit 
of nice food he bent to it. Still it stuck. With a whistle audible 
for a quarter of a mile, he got on his knees, straightened out his 
hind legs, and put his whole force to it. He was successful. We 
could almost read his satisfaction, in the gentle flaps of his huge 
ears and the graceful curve of his proboscis as he put it up to the 
mounted mahout, asking his reward. 

Sticks, over two feet thick and 20 feet long are lifted up bodily 
upon the great ivories, and are then carried off and laid upon the 



SAGACIOUS ELEPHANTS. 165 

gangways so gently as not to make a jar. One stick 22 inches 
thick and 22 feet long we saw carried in this way. In carrying 
this the beast had a path not three feet wide among masses 
of loose logs. He had to plant his fore-feet upon the latter and 
thus walk a considerable distance. He looked as if he were 
walking upon his hind legs. The corner of a frail little bamboo 
hut stood in his way. He lifted the log over the roof, and bent 
his body so that his sides gently scraped the corner of the house 
and did not shake it. A hundredth part of his weight would have 
caused it to topple from its pile foundation. He was ordered to 
'carry off a pile of 4 x 6 pieces 10 to 15 feet long. He ran his tusks 
under quite a number. The mahout told him that was not 
enough. He tried again, and probably doubled his load. His 
driver gave him a fierce prod with his iron hook over the fore- 
head. With a shriek of rage he sent his ivories under the pile and 
threw his snout over the top. He had to get on his knees to get 
the load up. It was a decent dray-load. As he passed us, perched 
on a pile of logs, we moved away, for we thought there was 
blood in his eye and that he might dump the load on the foreign- 
ers. But when he came back he stopped before us, got on his 
knees, bowed three times, and held out his snout to us for a 
gratuity. I pitched a coin to the mahout. He whispered to the 
beast that his elephantship would get a part of it. This seemed 
satisfactory, for he snuffed up a pint of dust, blew it over his big 
rump, and marched off for a bath in a mud-hole not far away. 
Each native mill has a pair. They work only in short spells, and 
take their rest while feeding in grass-grown mud-ponds. 

In Mandalay we saw quite a number belonging to the English 
commissary department. They were formerly King Thebaw's. 
One of them had a little baby only 34 inches long. The mother 
was chained to a tree. The baby toddled to us and held out his 
snout. I tried to catch it. He gave a whistle. I feared the cow 
would break loose — she seemed so uneasy and strained so at her 
chain. But I got my hand on the little fellow's back and 
scratched it. How he wriggled with pleasure ! The mother 
understood the thing and eased up. When we started off the 
calf wanted more Tubbing and followed us. The cow blew a 
whistle that made us hurry. The little fellow then toddled back 
and took a pull at his morning bottle. 

On the steamer going to Mandalay, a Mr. Lacey, superintend- 
ent of the great Bombay Timber Company, was a fellow passen- 
ger. He employs 600 elephants drawing teak logs to the creeks, 
several hundred miles up one of the branches of the Irrawaddy. 
He has been here many years, and gave me several curious 
anecdotes showing the wonderful sagacity of the great monsters. 
With the risk of being prolix, I will give some of them, which he 
assured me were true. 

A mahout (elephant keeper) was addicted to the use of opium. 



1 66 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Orders were given that when the elephant trains went to the 
market village for supplies, this man should remain at an out 
station some miles away. The wily fellow had a long talk with 
his elephant — they seem to understand Burmese, — and told him 
to go to town and get him some opium. Off he went alone, and, 
reaching the village, tore around like mad. The villagers went to 
the trees. The elephant nosed around, smelt where opium was 
stored, took a ball, and trotted to his keeper. This was done a 
second time, when the foreman gave orders to the opium vendor 
that a small piece of the drug should be given the beast whenever 
he came. In this way the mahout was kept on very short 
allowance ; the elephant did not seem to comprehend the 
necessity of getting a ball, but was satisfied with a small bit. 

At another time a logging camp got out of sugar. It was near 
a trail along which a pony train to and from China passed. The 
mahouts knew a train was near at hand ; one of them explained 
to his brute what was wanted, and sent him to intercept the 
train. He did so, scared the men to the trees, and scattered the 
loads of the ponies. The elephant found some sugar baskets, ate 
his own fill — they are very fond of sweets, — and carried off a 
basket to his keeper. 

Each elephant has his individual keeper, but when they go into 
camp at close of day they are sent ofT alone to the jungles for 
dry wood, and never fail to bring the proper kind. From what I 
saw and from many things told us, I am persuaded they have 
decided reasoning qualities and are not simply taught tricks by 
rote. We watched the performance of several at Rangoon for 
two or three hours, and saw evidences of sagacity far surpassing 
the little tricks done in the menageries. The mahout sits on a 
houdah on the back of the animal. He rarely speaks loud enough 
for one to hear him a few feet off. Mr. Lacey believes the 
animals understand Burmese. One day he praised one of the 
elephants in this language. The animal showed evident pleasure. 
He, to test the thing, then spoke disparagingly of him. The 
vain monster gave such unmistakable signs of being angry that 
the mahout asked Lacey to desist to prevent danger. He 
watched closely and could discover no sign -or word from the 
mahout. 

It was on the night of the 22d we boarded at Rangoon the rail- 
road train for Prome, several hundred miles up the river, but 
only 170 by the air-line road. The first- and second-class cars are 
a species of sleepers, a swinging berth being let down over the 
seats, which run lengthwise. Each car has two compartments, 
with a wash-room attached, and holding four passengers. The 
traveller furnishes his own bedding and towels. The first-class 
has cushioned seats ; the second not. The moon was bright till 
midnight, so that we could see the country almost as well as by 
day. Up to Prome the land is flat, grows great quantities of rice, 



IRRA WADD Y RI VER. 1 6 7 

and has good-sized plantations of bananas, and many scattered 
sugar- or toddy-palms. At seven, the 22d, we took a steamer for 
Mandalay, up river 300 miles. The river resembles the lower 
Mississippi. It is now the dry season, and the stream is nearly 
50 feet lower than in the summer. It does not rain in Burmah 
from November to May, and the dry weather changes the coun- 
try almost as perceptibly as the winter's frosts do with us. Half 
of the trees on the hills, which run down to the river much as on 
the Ohio, are nearly as free from leaves as with us in late autumn, 
and the grass was dry and parched. On the east bank rolling 
lands run back many miles. These look as if they would produce 
nothing ; but we are told tolerable crops could be grown on them. 
The river is fringed with beautiful trees — tamarind, sacred ban- 
yan, and several varieties of the leguminous family of great beauty. 
The stream has a rapid current and a treacherous channel, which 
changes so often that native pilots are taken aboard two or three 
times a day. But still with these, so rapid are the changes that, 
the steamers dare not run after sunset, even when the moon is at 
its brightest. When the sun sets the anchor is dropped, and is 
not weighed again until daybreak. 

We had been led to expect beautiful scenery along the river, 
but were disappointed. The hills are fine, often rising to the 
dignity of low mountains, but the foliage was so sparse and the 
grasses so parched that we could not call the scenery even good. 
To the people of lower Burmah, accustomed to the almost dead 
fiats of the delta of the Irrawaddy, the upper river may be beau- 
tiful, but not to us who have seen so much during the past five 
months. About half-way between Prome and Mandalay there is 
a stretch of country, far nearly or quite 100 miles, which is almost 
desolate. The plains to the east are broken and almost as bare 
of trees as those of our Rocky Mountains. What trees do grow 
are low and hardly green enough to relieve the eye as it looks 
over the yellow-brown hills. The prettiest part of this tract is 
where there is an almost dense growth of tree cactus, 6 to 20 
feet high, and frequently with trunks a foot thick. They were 
covered with leaves of bright yellow, and resembled huge, beau- 
tifully branched candelabra with burning candles. This is the 
region of oil wells, of which there are many. One feature of the 
picturesque, however, was never wanting — the pagodas. They 
were always in sight, and oftentimes scores of them could be seen 
of all sizes, from 20 feet to 100 and more in height. Some were 
in ruins, with shrubs and trees growing out of their debris ; 
others were white and well preserved, with gilded umbrellas on 
their pinnacles and ornamentations of mirror glass flashing 
back the sun's rays, and about sunset looking like light-houses ; 
sometimes they were on little elevations in the plain, then were 
mounted on almost inaccessible hill-tops. Some were single, 
others were in groups. Some had kyoung attachments, which 



1 68 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

were monasteries in the neighborhood of villages ; others were 
miles away from any habitation. 

At Pagahn, once the capital of the kingdom, on a space along 
the river of eight miles, by two miles deep, there are said to be 
9,999 ; many of them of great size and gilded from top to bot- 
tom. The gilding, however, is much tarnished. Several here 
are totally different from the ordinary pattern, having the ap- 
pearance of noble cruciform cathedrals, with windows and great 
halls within, and surmounted by lofty domes and conical spires. 
Both on our upward and downward voyages we anchored op- 
posite this old town. It was a strange sight to look upon, 
this city of beautiful buildings in every stage of decay, in 
which no living people dwell. As the sun dropped down its 
rays were caught by the mirrors, now on one and then on another 
lofty spire, as if the spirits of the long since dead were revisiting 
the scenes of their pious deeds. After nightfall, when the nearly 
full moon lighted the whole up with her pale face, the thing was 
wonderfully weird and touching. 

Centuries have gone by since a great population lived close 
by. Superstitions — not cruel and revolting — whose aliment was 
a beautiful and dreamy philosophy, caused this strange profusion 
of vain offerings. The centuries have been laid by with those of 
the mighty past, and the descendants of the builders of these 
edifices are, just as their forefathers were, governed by a faith 
sweet in theory, but deadening in its practical results. Their 
faculties, naturally bright and joyous, have been numbed, and 
their energies repressed by a religious philosophy which teaches 
that a life of dead tranquillity and an eternity of slothful dreami- 
ness is better than a life of toil and progress and an eternity of 
active joys and singing delights. 

A tradition tells that an old prophecy declared that if 10,000 
pagodas should be erected at Pagahn, it and the ruling dynasty 
would be eternal. But whenever new one's were built and a 
count was had, it invariably turned out that an old one had 
crumbled into decay for every new one erected. The 
io,oooth pagoda could never be counted. The king became 
alarmed. He thought the demons had conspired against the 
then capital, and so moved away. But the pagodas remain, 
and Pagahn is, to the Buddhist, as sacred as Jerusalem is to the 
Christian. By the way, the capital of Burmah has been many 
times changed. When I was a boy it was Ava. Mindoon, 
Thebaw's father, 29 years ago, conceived his capital to be un- 
lucky ; so he packed up and moved his palace, the people, and 
the town to Mandalay, and to-day there is nothing to show that 
Ava was ever a city. A large number of pagodas are about 
its old site, but that is all. And Mandalay grew in 27 years to 
be a city of over 250,000 inhabitants. 

All Europeans, friends and foes, charge the Burmese with 



BURMESE MEN AND WOMEN. 169 

being among the laziest of men. Their long adherence to 
Buddhism has schooled them to a life of idleness — they say, of 
meditation. But meditation, without a real, living object, be- 
gets idleness. Their government has been for ages one of selfish 
despotism. Accumulation invited the tax-gatherer. Oriental 
taxation has always been another name for extortion and rob- 
bery. Thrift begat extortion. There was never any inducement 
for thrift except the hope of the acquirement of enough to build 
a pagoda. To conceal wealth enough for this pious object was 
difficult and dangerous. 

Every thing conspired to make the people live for the enjoy- 
ment of the passing hour. The climate is so genial that wants 
are few. A paddy field, when planted requires little labor. The 
lands suited to rice culture are very fertile. Tickle the soil with 
a plow — a mere single-toothed harrow — and it is ready for the 
seed. Then cover it with water and nothing more is needed 
until the harvest begins. The Burmese man works with great 
energy while getting his crop in. Lazy men generally do. 
After that is done he passes his time in visiting pagodas and 
praying, — in gossiping with his neighbors and playing chess. A 
wide strip of cotton cloth about the loins is his every-day dress. 
One of silk and a bright handkerchief for his head makes him an 
elegant gentleman. He works just enough to get these and his 
rice, and his tasks are done. 

His wife, however, is industrious. She attends the shop, gets 
the meals, and does fully half the out-door work, leaving the 
man to play the idler, or to take care of the children. She is not 
hidden, as in most Oriental lands. She goes about town, rules 
her husband and the household, drives the best bargains when 
selling the produce of their fields, wears of evenings, or when 
visiting religious places, gay-colored silk " tameins " — generally 
of some shade of red, — and has a scarf of bright yellow figured- 
silk over her shoulders ; dresses her coal-black hair in most be- 
coming style, rarely failing to have a sprig of flowers in her 
chignon ; covers her arms and fingers with bracelets and rings, 
encircles her ankles with silver anklets, and fills her ears with 
gold and jewels. With the poor the gold is brass, and the jevv^els 
are but glass. When a number of them are together they make 
a gay and pretty picture. The colors used by a single individual 
do not seem to harmonize, b.ut when several are grouped they 
make a most harmonious whole. 

The women are far from being ill-looking, and many are not 
only pretty but really beautiful. They do not fade and grow old 
as in Japan and Siam, but continue fair when fat and 40. When 
looking into their full faces one sees decided beauty. The pro- 
file, however, is defective. They all have the Mongolian cast of 
face — high cheek-bones, short noses, and fiat visage. These make 
a bad side view. They are all self-possessed, without boldness, 



I70 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

easy and graceful in deportment, without either coyness or 
coquetry. If asked how I can form an opinion on so short an 
acquaintance, I reply I saw many women at the various pagodas 
visited, in the shops and attending the bazaars, and have forti- 
fied the result of my own observations by information gained 
from men and women who have resided here for many years. 
Europeans have opportunities for studying this people not given 
anywhere else in the East — for the intercourse between the sexes 
is quite as free as anywhere in Christendom. 

Marriage is simply a civil contract, dissolvable at will. When 
dissolved the property is equally divided between the parties. 
Certain forms are gone through before the elders and the knot is 
untied. Not only do the women trade and attend the shops, 
manage the household, and do light field-work, but we saw squads 
of them sweeping the street in Mandalay. In going up and 
down the river we landed at several towns and villages. We, 
when possible, took a few minutes' run through the little towns. 
They were all very dusty and dingy. The houses are a frame- 
work on posts, with walls of plaited bamboo or woven palm. 
There was no evidence of any luxury — a few flowers in pots the 
only attempt at ornamentation. 

When the steamer reached a landing-place we would hear a 
plunge and a splash near the bow, then others in succession made 
by the deck-hands leaping into the river and swimming to the 
shore with the line, and when we pulled out the man left on shore 
to let go the line invariably swam to the boat. Then the brow of 
the high bank would be seen — bright in red, white, yellow, and 
orange, and all tints of these, made by the gay garments of men 
and women gathered to see the boat. A woman's dress is the 
" tamein," a strip of cotton or silk reaching from the waist to the 
ankles. This is wrapped once around and girded at the waist. 
Around the bust, leaving the upper part bare, is a strip wrapped 
in a fold. A scarf goes over one shoulder, falling under the other 
arm, and caught. This can be spread so as to cover both shoul- 
ders. Ordinarily, however, one of the shoulders, arms, and the 
upper bust are bare, and in walking the " tamein " parts on one 
side so as to slightly expose the leg, considerably above the knee. 
In Rangoon many of the native ladies wear a short white jacket, 
a modern innovation borrowed from white people. 

The people are yellow, tinged down to quite dark, and sometimes 
almost black. The hair is long and glossy on men and women. The 
men, however, of the coolie class cut close, or else shave a good 
part of the head. The holes for earrings in the woman's ear are 
large enough to admit a thimble — she sometimes carries her 
cheroot in it. All classes, old and young, smoke — ordinarily a 
cheroot filled with a little tobacco mixed with certain barks and 
wood. The covering is, to a great extent, the inner shuck of In- 
dian corn or fibre of some of the palms. It is about the size of a 




■— ■i«<Cnf«i:^S«F<4^^- ^"t. (^^> ■ 



MANDALAY. PALACES. 171 

common candle. The women smoke these so much that their 
hps curl when the cigar is absent. They smoke when walking, in 
the shops, and attending the stores of the bazaars. They are very 
devout, and throughout certain days and about sundown of every 
day are to be seen kneeling in crowds in the kyoungs or chapels. 

Large numbers of cattle are reared along the river, and many 
buffalo. The latter do the heavy plowing, but the ox is used for 
carts and cabs. He is a very pretty animal, small, short-horned, 
and with a pretty hump. A ride at Mandalay in an ox-cab was 
enough disagreeable for me to remember the rest of my life. The 
carriage body was three and a quarter feet wide, four feet long, 
and three feet high. I had to squat down in this. My team were 
good movers, and trotted at a good rate from the steamboat to 
the hotel three miles away. I bore it without swearing, but I 
prayed most fervently that we should reach our goal. Each ox 
at Mandalay wears a little bell. Pony carriages take the place of 
these at Rangoon. The ponies are fine little fellows, 10 to 
14 hands high, and move with fair speed. 

Mandalay grew from a naked plain to a city of 250,000 inhabi- 
tants in less than 30 years. This was not from its advantageous 
situation, but simply sprang from the fiat of Mindoon, the king. 
He ordered the place to be a city, and it was. Its inhabitants 
paid no taxes, and to a large extent were fed upon the master's 
bounty, at the expense of the taxpayers of the kingdom. Min- 
doon laid out the city exactly a mile and an eighth square, sur- 
rounded it with a wall 30 feet high, prettily crenulated and 
backed by earth 20 feet thick ; outside of this is a broad esplan- 
ade and a moat 50 yards wide, deep, full of fish, and supplying 
the city with water. In the centre of the walled city he placed 
his palace, enclosed by a strong stockade of teak timber and a 
brick wall 20 feet high. The remainder of this inner city was 
packed with buildings, but outside of the moat the bulk of the 
people lived in their huts, surrounded by gardens covering a very 
large area. The king lavished great wealth in making this palace 
as beautiful as Oriental taste could suggest. The queen's garden, 
at the south end of the palace enclosure, must have been very 
beautiful when it was kept fresh and green. Two or three acres 
contained lotus and lily ponds, with heavy rock-work and gravelled 
walks. The ponds had islands surmounted by kiosks, beautifully 
carved, and pretty bridges springing from island to island. In 
the centre was a great bath sunken below the surface, cemented 
to resemble marble, surrounded by pillared arcades planned by 
Italian architects. 

The palace does not consist of one large building, but of a large 
number of wooden structures, 30 to 40 feet wide by 50 to 60 in 
length. They are rather open porticos than houses. The roofs 
are supported by columns eight to ten feet apart. Apparently 
they are two stories, but this is only for architectural effect. The 



172 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

second story recedes upon the first some eight or ten feet, and 
is supported as the first is, only by more lofty pillars lifting from 
the floor of the first story. The houses are, therefore, large 
vaulted porticos, 30 to 40 feet high, divided by a partition running 
across the centre and surrounded by open network cut from metal 
or wood. The low cornices of the two stories are a mass of wood- 
carving, generally very prettily executed. The entire structure 
is lifted from the ground about eight feet upon columns. Some 
two dozen of these structures were for the immediate use of the 
king and queen, and are a mass of rich carving within and with- 
out, and are gilded from top to bottom, except where red lacquer 
is used as a relief, and where gems are used for ornamentation. 
These gems are of glass in imitation of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, 
and sapphires. 

One of the king's edifices, called the " Centre of the Universe," 
is apparently seven stories high, surmounted by an oblong struc- 
ture or lantern two to three feet in diameter and 30 odd feet high. 
This is a mass of mirror glass cut into gem form ; on top is the 
Buddhistic umbrella. Immediately under this umbrella, on the 
main floor, is the throne, in a vaulted room supported by columns 
70 feet high. All columns are of perfectly straight teak timber. The 
ceilings, rafters, partitions, the outer roofs, and even the pillars 
beneath the houses, are gilded and covered with gem ornamenta- 
tion, which is very beautiful. It was all built for present use, and 
lacks that necessary ingredient of architecture, the appearance of 
permanency ; but, with all the lavish richness and Oriental ex- 
travagance, there is nothing tawdry or out of keeping with true 
Oriental taste. The buildings used by the attaches of the court 
are of the same general design, but are colored in red lacquer, 
without either gilt or gems. 

Many of the pagodas and kyoungs of the city are very remark- 
able. The Koo-thoo-daw is a plain but perfectly proportioned 
gilded pagoda, nearly 200 feet high, and surrounded by 500 small 
pagodas or shrines, each about 12 feet square and 30 high. Each 
of these has a chapel within, containing a tablet of stone four feet 
high, covered with extracts from the most sacred of Buddhist 
scriptures, cut in delicate letters. The gateway through the wall 
which surrounds these would do credit to any architect in any 
age. Not far from this on a huge raised platform of many acres, 
is the Incomparable Pagoda, 400 to 500 feet square, elevated 
by'terraced stories, seven in number, to the height of 170 feet ; at 
a distance it looks, in its plain whiteness, like a huge wedding- 
cake. It encloses a vast vaulted hall, with lofty ceilings, sup- 
ported by 100 to 200 beautiful columns, 70 feet high. It contains 
a vast wealth of wood-carving of exquisite workmanship. The 
interior is entirely of gilt, with vermilion relief. The lacquer- 
work of Burmah, by the way, is inferior only to that of Japan. 
The shrine of this pagoda, containing a monster Buddha, is gor- 
geously decorated. 



BEAUTIFUL EDIFICES. 173 

The king's throne house, called the " Centre of the Universe," is 
considered by the Burmese the chef-d' oeuvre of art. But to me 
the true gems of Mandalay are two kyoungs, one called the king's 
and the other the queen's house of prayer. They are not far 
from the Incomparable Pagoda. I have lost the leaf from my 
note-book in which I had measurements taken on the spot. I will 
try to describe them as they are fixed in my memory. Imagine 
a wooden platform raised about eight feet on a great number of 
gilded wooden pillars about 20 inches in diameter. This platform 
is, say, 50 by 150. Across one end is a two-story pavilion, 30 by 
50 feet. The first story is I2 to 15 feet at the eaves. The roof 
is a bent concave. From the inner line of this roof springs the 
apparent second story, about lO feet high, with a concave bent roof 
running up to a large roof-tree. At the four corners of each roof 
lift dolphin-shaped ornaments several feet high. Midway between 
these is a sort of dormer roof, with a front, a species of broad 
spear-head. Under the eaves of each roof is a frieze in carved vine 
and flower pattern, and over this long rows of pretty little 
statuettes. The second story is enclosed solidly. The first story 
is enclosed with open screens of network pattern. The roof of 
both stories is supported by a mass of columns or pillars running 
from the main or only floor to the rafters. Standing with its end 
toward and behind this pavilion is another similar one, united to 
it by a low covered colonnade, and behind this, also united to it 
by a colonnade, is still another similar pavilion, except that it has 
seven stories, each story less receding than the one under it and 
of less height, but with similar ornamentation. This latter is 
surrounded by a tall, oblong, lantern-shaped member, and on 
it a metallic half-opened umbrella. The whole of these struc- 
tures are of exquisitely carved wood, and within and without 
gilded from platform to pinnacle, and studded with imitation 
jewels — diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The brackets, 
dentelli, and rafters are colored, principally in vermilion lacquer. 
The seemingly seven-story building contains a lofty hall, in the 
centre of which is a colossal alabaster Buddha, surrounded by a 
shrine of great richness. The carvings in and about one of these 
payars are very elegant, and consists of hundreds, if not thou- 
sands, of little statuettes and a great length of scrolls and friezes. 
Every thing is gilded and jewelled, except just enough of tinted 
lacquer for relief. About three feet at the lower end of each 
column is painted in vermilion, with gilded lacework uniting the 
lower member with the upper solidly gilded portion. 

I cannot imagine any thing more perfect in Oriental exuberance 
than one of these sets of buildings. I am not sure whether it is 
the king's or the queen's. One of them is used as an English 
chapel. The other, like the majority of the kyoungs of the city, 
is occupied by ofificers of the English army as quarters. A few 
are left to the natives for purpose of worship. It is greatly to 
the credit of the ofificers that they are careful to preserve every 



174 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

thing as much as possible. The palaces and kyoungs are par- 
titioned off for bedrooms, and the officers' mess-rooms have 
thrones and exquisite shrines for sideboards. The ruling powers 
do as little violence as possible to the religious prejudices and 
superstitions of the natives. Absolute tolerance is the rule. I 
understand the government is desirous of preserving some of the 
more beautiful buildings as curios. The estimates require 700,000 
rupees to place them in good condition, and 100,000 annually 
thereafter to maintain them. 

We visited, just before sunset, a place of worship distant from 
the army quarters. It was an elaborate kyoung, with four colon- 
naded approaches several hundred feet long, leading from the four 
surrounding streets. The centre shrine and building over it, 
together with the long double rows of columns and their roofing, 
were a mass of imitation jewels, bits of mirror, and gilt. This 
was but lately erected, and indeed is not yet finished. Hundreds 
of men and women were worshipping before the golden Buddha, 
and the priests let us know that they considered it a thing of 
magnificence. We, however, found it tawdry and utterly lacking 
in art. The worship in Buddhist temples is apparently as sincere 
and quite as earnest as in any Christian church, and many of the 
ceremonies very touching. I recall a memorial service for some 
dead man in a temple at Kioto, Japan, which was as interesting 
and full of feeling as any thing I ever witnessed. One has to 
become accustomed to the peculiar shout, and to the occasional 
striking of the gong and sounding of a bell. The intelligent 
religious ideas of the world are to be found within Christianity; 
but there is much genuine piety and real fervor in the Buddhist 
church. 

We send missionaries to convert the heathen in India, China, 
Siam, Japan, and Burmah. In all of these countries there are 
large colonies of Europeans and Americans. The missionaries 
preach Jesus. The foreigners at the same hour are practising the 
devil. Everywhere all kinds of business is closed during the race 
week, and our good people bet like Portuguese, and very many 
get as drunk as lords and swear like troopers. I do not mean 
that all do this, but enough do to leaven the whole lump in the 
eyes of the poor benighted heathen. The missionary in the pulpit 
tells his Chinese or Indian audience that one of the vices is 
gambling, and that this is a sin intolerable within the Christian 
church. While he preaches on Sunday every billiard hall in the 
city is being patronized by foreigners, who have to take a " peg " 
(drink) in honor of each fine run. And in the clubs games of 
cards are being played in quiet rooms, and drinks are being 
brought to the players by native waiters, who take tips, and 
afterward buy candles to burn before the shrine of their own god. 

Christmas-day we visited the many beautiful kyoungs of Man- 
dalay. In one, a part of a regiment was holding high carnival. 



A JOLLY CHRISTALAS. DACOITS. 175 

It was a holiday, and considerable license was permitted, so that 
the boys, so far away from their homes, could celebrate the day 
our Saviour was born. How the boys did celebrate ! They sang 
in every brogue known from Kerry and Cork up to Dublin, and 
in every dialect from York to Cornwall, and from Glasgow to John 
o'Groat's house. Their heads were as full of grog as their hearts 
were of devotion. Some came out of their barracks. Their eyes 
were red from weeping tears of joy because they knew the 
Redeemer lived. They danced in remembrance of the fact that 
David danced before the ark of the Lord ; they reeled and leered 
from intense fervor, and talked in drunken gibberish. They were 
drunk in joyous frenzy, because of the brightness the Star of 
Bethlehem had brought to the world. Ah ! they were shining 
examples of the blessing handed down through 1,800 years to the 
enlightened sons of Europe. 

The poor, benighted natives can point to these as living evi- 
dences of the blessings conferred when a pagan is converted at 
the cost of $10,000 to $20,000 a head. Missionaries are needed 
throughout the East, but they are needed most to convert the 
Christians of the East, and to lead them to follow the path trod- 
den by the Son of Man. The examples set by the foreigners 
undo the good the pious missionary preaches to the pagan. A 
native in Rangoon wanted a job and claimed to be a Christian. 
When this was doubted he said he " could drink brandy now, 

and could say God d like an Englishman." This gave his 

idea of what a Christian could do. 

I doubt if Mandalay long retains its population. Just now the 
army supports it. But when it departs the bulk of the people 
must go. There can be no commerce to support there a large 
city. Burmah will, ultimately, be greatly benefited by English 
rule, but it will be at the expense of the Burmese. They seem 
too lazy and careless to hold their own against the Chinese and 
Indians who will flock to the land when it becomes quieted. 
Several years must elapse before this condition can be brought 
about. I refer to upper Burmah, taken two years ago from King 
Thebaw. A species of brigandage, called " Dacoitism," is rife 
throughout the land. The dacoits are poorly armed, and cannot 
make any headway against the well armed English soldiery. 
But they kill and pillage friends and foes and burn down the 
villages. They are the young and restless men who have no 
means of self-support, and take this means of avenging them- 
selves upon the conquerors and of gaining the livelihood they 
are too lazy to earn by work. When pursued they scatter and 
simply appear to be villagers. I saw, on our steamer, coming 
down the river, a large number of them in irons as prisoners. 
Many were mere boys and none were even middle-aged. Under 
the old government they eked out a scanty subsistence, but their 
wants were few and they knew nothing of any thing better. Con- 



176 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

tact with the outer world enlarges their wants, but will not stim- 
ulate their industry. The women will ultimately intermarry 
with the intruders (not Europeans), and a sturdier race will grow 
up. Then, and not till then, will upper Burmah fill up and be- 
come prosperous. It is about as large as France, four times as 
large as Illinois, and has not more people than our own prairie 
State, and has not increased for several centuries. There are 
evidences that it has been constantly decreasing for probably 
several ages. 

Thebaw is a state prisoner in the Madras country, and the 
English blacken the poor devil's character, so as to justify, in 
the eyes of the world, their high-handed act when they took from 
him his country. I met several intelligent Italians who have 
been in the land many years. These declare the representations 
of the English to be calumnies ; that Thebaw was not a drunk- 
ard ; that he was a good-hearted, overgrown boy, and that the 
acts laid to his door as barbarities were the acts of his ministers, 
in which he had no hand. But the Italians were the fellows who 
feathered their nests under the old regime. They probably ex- 
aggerate in one direction as much as the English do in the other. 
It will be for the good of the world that Thebaw was deposed. 
But I do not see why England should not boldly acknowledge 
she wanted all Burmah for strategic and state reasons, and justify 
thq act by an honest declaration of the truth, instead of using so 
many little make-believes. She took and will hold the country 
because she wants it, as she holds so many other countries. His- 
tory will paint her as a wholesale, but wonderfully wise, robber. 

While I write on the Palatina, between Rangoon and Calcutta, 
the sun has gone down. The ship has anchored outside of the 
Hooghly River, one of the many estuaries of the Ganges. The 
moon has just come up from over a low island to the east. The 
air is balmy and has the sweet odor of the land. Light clouds 
move lazily across the ruddy face of the queen of night. A well- 
born daughter of that far-off island, which rules nearly a third of 
the world by her brain and through her well-filled coffers, is play- 
ing on a piano, under the awning covering the quarter-deck, and 
with gentle touch, the sweet variations of the " Mocking Bird." 
Refined gentlemen and gentlewomen loll or walk softly about, 
respectfully listening to the music. Every thing immediately 
about us : the great steamer with its electric lights, the refined 
passengers, some of them Urasians, or half-breeds, indicate high 
civilization. It is hard to realize that on yon island, just under 
the low-lying moon, tigers are more abundant than in any other 
part of the world. The keepers of the signal station on it live 
within high walls, and dare not go lOO yards beyond them. 
Refuge houses are built along the coast on high piles close to 
the water. Canned goods, 400 gallons of water, a chart with full 
directions how to find a port, and a boat are stored in each. And 



ENTRANCE INTO THE GANGES. 177 

great placards are stuck up on the walls warning the shipwrecked 
man to beware of the tigers, and not to attempt to get off ex- 
cept by day, and at no time to venture into the jungle. The 
islands and surrounding mainland are swampy, and the low 
jungles are said absolutely to swarm with tigers and crocodiles. 
Nothing less than a tidal wave seems able to drive them away. 

To-morrow (the 3d of January, 1888) we proceed up the 
Hooghly to Calcutta, the capital of India — India, the cradle of 
the world's lore ; India, the land of the sacred Ganges and of 
" coral strands," of Juggernautic cars, and of blazing funeral 
beds ; of lovely women, old India, the world's dreamland since 
history first was written. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE HOOGHLY— CALCUTTA— MOUNT EVEREST— A WONDERFUL 

RAILROAD— A DINNER WITH LORD DUFFERIN, AND 

A STATE BALL. 

Calcutta, January 13, 1888. 

I HAVE always been to some extent a reading man, and consid- 
ered myself reasonably well informed historically, geographically, 
and ethnologically on the countries of the world. I had been 
taught to think of India as one concrete whole. I even casually 
regarded both it and Farther India as a unit. This was all er- 
roneous. India is a compound of many distinct peoples, and is 
widely diverse in its geographical, climatic, and historical ele- 
ments in its parts. Steaming up the Hooghly, one of the 
branches forming the Ganges delta to Calcutta, the land on 
either bank was low and flat. Dykes 10 to 15 or more feet high 
ran along the banks 50 to 200 feet back. These are for protec- 
tion, less against floods in the rainy seasons, than against tidal 
and cyclonic waves, which are frequently very destructive. Great 
rice fields were seen as far as the trees would permit the eye to 
range. Clusters of straw stacks were frequent, showing that the 
stubble is not left on the ground, as is the case among the lazy 
Siamese and Burmese, but is saved. The stacks are as pretty in 
shape as grain stacks are in our land or even in England. Cocoa- 
nut and date palms were everywhere seen, either standing singly 
over the fields or in clumps about the villages and hamlets, the 
picturesque bent roofs of the houses barely visible among the 
palm fronds. These roofs are all of thatch, laid smoothly and 
thickly over a ridge-pole of bamboo bent longitudinally across 
the centre of the house, several feet higher in the centre than at 
the two ends. This gives the houses or huts the appearance of 
smooth-topped bent hay-ricks, and makes them very picturesque 
in the midst of the rich verdure. As we proceeded up the river 
the tropical growth on each bank became richer, frequently ap- 
pearing as a dense jungle. 

We passed the dangerous sand bars at the mouth of the James 
and Mary River with some little anxiety. There was nothing 
apparent in the conformation of the river to indicate the smallest 
danger, but every sailor aboard was at his particular post, and 
several at the great wheel, ready to act on a moment's notice if 

178 



THE JAMES AND MARY QUICKSANDS. 179 

any thing should derange the steam-steering machinery. The 
ship bent in and out along the tortuous channel some two or 
three miles in an almost serpentine track. Close to us was the 
mast of a great steamer, a few feet out of the water, and day by 
day sinking deeper. Under it are other ships, we are told many 
others, which went down at different times during past years, and 
the natives believe are constantly sinking, to stop only when the 
centre of the earth shall be reached. The entire bottom of the 
river is composed of quicksand. If a ship touches bottom it is 
liable at once to be thrown around by the strong current, to be 
careened, and to become unmanageable. The quicksands begin 
immediately to swallow it into a maw which seems insatiable. 
Sailors consider this the most dangerous bar in the world. When 
we had passed through, the passengers, with solemn mien, con- 
gratulated each other that we would not be crocodiles' meat this 
time at least. 

We met many ships in the afternoon and saw a forest of masts 
extending for miles along the river at Calcutta. Great three- and 
four-masted ships were often lying four deep. I had never be- 
fore seen so many vessels at any river town. We passed the now 
deserted palace of the old King of Oudh, who died only a lit- 
tle while ago, having been England's state prisoner for many 
years, living in royal splendor with his women, with his tigers 
and other animals, and watching and guiding the flights of his 
thousands of fancy pigeons. England took from him his king- 
dom, his diamonds, and his liberty, leaving him his luxury, his 
superstitions, and his bitter hatred of his despoilers. What a 
mighty throng of Banquos could shake their gory locks at Al- 
bion and, pointing to their fatal wounds, say : "Thou didst it." 

When we drew up to the pier we had to surrender our revolv- 
ers. The next day, after considerable delay, I got them back, 
on payment of a duty equal to nearly half the value I put upon 
them. The duty on firearms is almost prohibitory, and is in- 
tended to keep them out of the hands of the natives. 

Calcutta is a very handsome city, with a population of about 
500,000, 14,000 being Europeans. There are many handsome 
buildings belonging to the governing classes. All are of brick, 
plastered in whitish or yellowish cement, and of chaste architect- 
ure. There are no long monotonous rows, but here the house is 
tall, there low, some with pilasters and porticos, others without, 
thus presenting a picturesque outline. The streets are well paved 
and kept clean. The viceroy's palace — " Government building " — 
is a large structure, with lofty, airy rooms of state, and decorated 
with life-sized portraits of eminent Indian rulers and princely 
rajahs. It is quite in the heart of the town, is surrounded by 
fine grounds with, at its rear, a noble garden. Behind this is a 
grand esplanade along the river, not far from three miles in 
length and three quarters of a mile in width. It is cut by fine 



i8o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

gravel roads and lined with spreading, handsome trees. The road- 
ways are kept well sprinkled. Toward sunset they are thronged 
with handsome carriages, drawn by good horses, mostly brought 
from New South Wales. Along the river is the drive of the 
elite. Here are to be seen foreigners well dressed and natives in 
gorgeous attire. Cut out of this esplanade is the Garden of 
Eden (named after a prominent mian or woman and not after the 
one from which our first parents were driven). A full band plays 
here every evening. Carved out of the lower end of the espla- 
nade is Fort William, a magnificent fort, capable of holding a gar- 
rison of 12,000 men. At the lower end of the esplanade is the 
zoological garden. It is well kept up, and has a collection of huge 
tigers. Two captive man-eaters are noble specimens, as far sur- 
passing the beasts of the menagerie as a big tomcat does a sick 
kitten. One, not long since captured, is said to have eaten 200 
natives. I shook my stick at him ; he sprang toward me with a 
roar Avhich caused my heart to pulsate painfully for nearly an 
hour after. Lord Dufferin told me the next day he would give 
me an open letter which might be useful to us in our tour 
through the country, provided I would not ask for elephants for 
a tiger hunt, which was the great aim of globe-trotters. I 
laughed, and told him of my scare, and that I would not hunt 
tigers if the elephants were twice as high. 

The European resident quarter of the city lies contiguous to 
the esplanade. The houses are large and nearly all surrounded 
by extensive grounds (throughout the East called compounds), 
filled with fruit or ornamental trees. They must be very beautiful 
in the spring when the flowering trees are in bloom. Many of 
the trees are then clothed in flowers of great size and of many 
colors. We have seen many varieties of trees and large shrubs, 
which bear flowers of a size utterly unknown in our temperate 
zones, the magnolia grandiflora being the only one in our South- 
ern States which can be compared to them. The native quar- 
ters of the city are better than in Siam or Burmah, but pre- 
sent very few features which lift them out of what an Ameri- 
can would term squalid. The suburbs have a great many tanks 
for holding water. These are generally oblong pits 50 to 200 
or 300 feet long and half as broad, and 10 to 15 feet deep. 
Some of them are parts of a system connected by small canals 
running to the river, not for navigable purposes, but simply as 
tank feeders. Many, however, have no connecting streams, but 
are filled by the enormous rainfall in the wet season, and be- 
come stagnant pools, breeding malaria and cholera. As in 
Bangkok, this dread disease is always here, the statistics ascrib- 
ing to it several deaths every week in the year, and running up 
to perhaps a hundred without being considered an alarming epi- 
demic. Foreigners seem to regard it lightly, and several have 
told me we pay it a ridiculous if not cowardly attention when it 



CALCUTTA AND ENVIRONS. i8i 

shows a disposition to visit our shores ; that, with the present 
knowledge of its proper treatment, it could never become a 
scourge in Europe or America if the people would only restrain 
their alarm. 

Calcutta, in its central parts, is supplied with water from many 
miles up the Hooghly. It is settled and filtered in large reser- 
voirs, and seems fairly pure water. Very careful people, how- 
ever, boil it ; but the majority of the foreigners use it as it comes 
from the hydrants. It is carried into upper floors in goat-skins. 
It looks queer to see coolies sprinkling the streets from skins 
slung over the shoulders. It is thus done throughout the espla- 
nade. In the business streets coolies sprinkle from large movable 
hose, or from carts which are filled by women carriers. Mr. Lin- 
coln regretted during our unpleasantness that he had more briga- 
diers than mules. Here men and women are cheaper than mules 
or oxen, and do the work which the four-legged beasts of burden 
should perform. 

Two days after our arrival we made a trip of 400 miles to 
Darjeeling in quest of the mighty Himalaya mountains. We were 
told we would get a freeze, and that mighty Everest was hiding 
under continual clouds. Trusting to our usual good-luck we 
went. The road ran due north over the flat lands forming the 
great delta of the Ganges. Both in going and returning we were 
upon the train at night, but the time-tables were such that we 
only lost 100 miles in the middle of the great plain. We had 
daylight while going and returning while traversing 250 to 300 
miles of country. Nearly all of it is under close cultivation. For 
several hours the road passed through rice-fields and plantations of 
cocoa-nut and date palms, orchards of mango, and jack-fruit, thick- 
ets of bananas, and fields of sugar-cane ; then through fields of 
wheat, some just planted or barely green, and others going into 
head ; fields of gram, of split peas, and other cereals ; then through 
fields of jute and of root crops. The whole country is a dead flat, 
crossed by several branches of the Ganges and bayous or natural 
canals. The fields had everywhere scattered trees, so that on 
looking over them from our low elevation they had the appearance 
of being almost wooded and brightly green. There were many 
villages and hamlets nestled down among palms, fruit orchards, 
and broad, spreading banyans. We made our beds in the cars, 
slept well, and in the morning had our first view of the dark foot- 
hills of the mighty backbone of Asia. These hills rise abruptly 
from the plain to a height of nearly 4,000 feet. They reach the 
plain in well defined spurs. Behind them rise mountain upon 
mountain, running back to Kunchinjinga, the second mountain of 
the world. This mighty pile, with its eternal snows, 12,000 feet 
above the snow-line, should have been visible from Siliguri, where 
we left the broad gauge and boarded the little train upon a two- 
foot road, but it was veiled in cloud and mist. 



i82 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

At the next station, just at the foot of the hills, we were only 
12 miles from Darjeeling, as the crow flies, but had to make a run 
of 46 on the road to reach our goal. We were to make this, not 
by long detours, diverging far away from the straight line, but by 
bending, winding, curving, doubling, looping, and zigzagging 
along the direct route, never more than a mile or so away from it, 
and crossing it again and again and over again many times. I 
cannot describe in words this climb of 7,400 and odd feet better 
than by saying, we ran up the curvings of a corkscrew. From 
this point the tea-gardens, which cover many of the slopes as far 
as Darjeeling, came in sight. Through the glass the deep-green 
bushes, — on terraces or in long rows covering the smooth slopes, — 
the white bungalows and factories, looked very pretty and pictu- 
resque. They mount the hills to a height of 4,000 feet. Deep 
valleys and gorges, covered with dense forests, or frowning, rocky 
crags, separated garden from garden. This was the commence- 
ment of the celebrated " Darjeeling tea plantations." The plant 
is of the Chinese variety, spreading into bushes from the root, 
differing from the Assam plant, which spreads from a single stock. 
At this season the bushes are being pruned down flat on the top 
—about two feet high — so as to give a larger surface to the air and 
sun's rays, and to permit a greater number of shoots, from which 
alone the young leaves are plucked for merchantable tea. There 
are now in this district 25,000 to 40,000 acres in producing gar- 
dens, and the government refuses to sell more land for tea- 
planting, hoping thus to prevent disastrous over-production. Cin- 
chona is being cultivated largely, the government making the 
first experiment in a 2,000-acre plantation, which has proved 
successful and very profitable. 

Soon after taking the narrow-gauge road we plunged on an easy 
grade into a dense forest, which looked as if it might be the lair 
of tigers. On the plain, a few miles back, we passed the edge of 
a wild jungle of tall reedy grass, canes, and rushes with plumes 
two feet long, 10 to 15 high, and of almost impenetrable thick- 
ness, in which are several herds of wild elephants and many tigers, 
several of the latter proving themselves lately to be bad man- 
eaters. A planter aboard told us of a coolie who was caught and car- 
ried off a few days before ; he was at once followed and overtaken. 
The man seemed as yet not much hurt, but the tiger was deter- 
mined not to abandon his dinner. The pursuers fired at him, 
trying to avoid hitting the native; the balls did not strike the 
monster in a vital part, who at each shot gave the man's shoulder 
a craunching bite. The poor fellow screamed to his keepers to 
shoot to kill, that he was being eaten. One of the planters, 
seeing the necessity, took good aim and sent his ball into the 
tiger's heart, but, unfortunately, also through the man. Full- 
grown buffaloes are frequently carried off. 

Our train consisted of nine cars, each one being nine 



A WINDING RAILROAD. 183 

feet long, the most of them open, so as to permit a full view from 
either side. We sat only 60 feet behind the engine, yet so short 
were the curves, after the ascent began, that the locomotive was 
rarely out of sight on one or the other side. Several times it 
seemed to be going nearly at right angles to the line of our car. 
We wormed along, now to the right then to the left, never on a 
level, and often climbing grades of one foot in less than 25, the 
average grade for the entire hill road being one in 28. We passed 
over four different complete loops, two of them double ones. 
These loops are none of them over 900 feet around. One, a per- 
fect circle, was between 500 and 600 feet in circumference, or less 
than 200 feet in diameter. The loops are made by the road 
passing on a bridge over itself in making the circle. The double 
loops are made by the track passing over itself, and then circling 
the hill on a higher level and to within a few feet of its first line 
of approach. Imagine a mountain spur ending in a rounded half 
cone of say 200 feet in diameter on its levelled summit. A rail- 
road comes up on one face of the spur from the valley below ; it 
reaches the cone, makes a complete circle around it on an ascend- 
ing grade, passing over itself, then makes another circle, and con- 
tinues its ascent along the other face of the spur but nearer its 
top ridge. Several curves are made nearly completing a loop, 
and one describes the figure eight. At one loop we met a de- 
scending freight train on a switch. In a few moments we saw 
it 100 feet below us, running in the same direction we were 
going. At one point a boy could throw a stone over three tracks, 
each some hundred feet below the one next above it. 

We were at one time climbing an hour or two through dense 
masses of richest tropical growth — thickets of wild bananas, of 
great bamboos of several varieties, some of them 60 feet high, of 
taro and other broad-leaved plants, and waxy, green, lofty trees. 
For several hours we looked aloft upon wooded mountains and at 
tea plantations far above us. Then we passed beyond the alti- 
tude of great bamboos and bananas. We were among tree-ferns 
10 to 20 feet high, their great fronds spreading wide and beauti- 
fully. All trees were covered with moss from root to branch. 
The branches and limbs were loaded with orchids, some of them 
in masses like hanging shrubs. Mighty climbing vines clung to 
the trees, their winding stalks having the appearance of huge ser- 
pents. Some of the trees seemed to have been strangled by the 
serpentine folds of these monsters. Many of the climbers had 
leaves a foot or more long. There were huge vines standing un- 
supported, looking like trees growing in corkscrew windings. 
They once wrapped about large trees which they strangled. The 
trees died and rotted, leaving the vines, resembling great cork- 
screws a foot and over in diameter, and able to support their own 
weight. Their long, snake-like branches were clinging to the 
tops of trees 30 to 50 feet away ; they had caught them many 



1 84 * A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

years ago, when their main supporters were yet alive. Still we 
climbed. Tea plantations and factories which we had looked at with 
glasses a while since far above us were now far down below. We 
wound around precipitous heights and looked over steep descents, 
dropping like precipices i,ooo feet almost under us ; deep valley 
gorges lay in mossy green far below ; green mountain heights 
lifted far above us. An Englishman asked me what I thought of 
the scenery. I replied : " It is beautiful." He looked at me with 
contempt and said : " You should have said grand." " No," I 
rejoined, " it is too green, too fresh, too flowery. The almond- 
trees are too pink ; the verdure is too tufted ; the flowing" outlines 
are too soft for grandeur. There are here all the elements of the 
beautiful." An hour later, when nearer the crests of the spur, 
and the mountains towering above thousands of feet were freer 
from trees, and rocky heights were predominating, I said to the 
Britisher : ' Now we have grandeur." He answered : " Your 
criticism was true. I was wrong." 

We passed through several mountain villages, and saw new 
races of men. Bright, active Nepaulese, men and women. Sturdy, 
dirty Bhootas, men and women, carrying great loads on their 
backs, suspended by a band over their forehead ; their cheek 
bones as high as American Indians', and their faces of the same 
hue, if the Indian's copper were only added. The women had 
their foreheads and cheeks stained as if with pig's blood. In 
their ears were huge drops studded with turquoises. Around their 
necks were all their wealth in silver, corals, and jewels ; bracelets 
covered their arms and silver anklets ran around the ankle ; stuck 
upon one side of their nose were ornaments like jewelled buttons. 
They were nearly all dirty, but many of them decidedly hand- 
some. All were good-natured and had mouths of pearly teeth. 
These are the doers of hard work, and came from Bhootan, up 
against Thibet. Here were Lepchees, the old inhabitants of 
these hills, very active and very lazy. They quit the land as cul- 
tivation approaches, preferring jungle fruits, roots, and berries to 
the produce of industry. The people of different tribes become 
easily distinguishable, and commend themselves to a traveller's 
favor by the brave freedom of their eyes, and the entire absence of 
the slavish servility which so characterizes the people of the plains. 

At four o'clock we had reached an elevation of over 7,400 feet, 
the highest mountain railroad station in the world. Darjeeling, 
three miles farther on, is a very picturesque town, with pretty 
houses, all in gardens, scattered along the steep side of a sort of 
amphitheatre, looking down over a deep valley and over slopes of 
tea-gardens. Over the valley in front of the town rears a succes- 
sion of mountains, 8,000, 10,000, and 12,000 feet high, with mag- 
nificent skylines; and farther over and beyond them, 45 miles 
away, mighty Kunchinjinga, 28,156 feet high, and next to Everest 
the loftiest peak on the globe. 



VARIOUS PEOPLES. 185 

Darjeeling is a summer resort for the Europeans of the plain, 
the summer home of the Lieutenant-Governor of India, who is 
also Governor of Bengal, and a sanitarium for the English troops. 
On the top of the hill, 1,000 feet above the town, is a barrack and 
hospital. In the town is a bazaar, in which on Sunday we saw a 
most interesting mass of 5,000 or 6,000 people, from Nepaul, Sik- 
kim, Bhootan, Thibet, and Darjeeling proper. It was one of a 
regular set of fairs for trading, and was food for several days' 
study. Trade was going on in sheep, goats, and ponies from 
Bhootan and a few from Thibet. People were there from Sikkim 
with maize, beans, peas, oranges, and grain ; people from Nepaul 
with knives and produce of several sorts. The stocks were small, 
frequently only so much as the dealer had brought on his back 
over the mountain passes. One had two or three bushels of 
Indian corn, a poor article. Another a little quantity of beans or 
millet. Here was a woman who had travelled for two or three 
days with two bushels of oranges hanging from her forehead. 
She had climbed a pass 18,000 feet high and slept in the cold 
open air on the bare ground, and was happy when she sold her 
stock out at retail and received three rupees, or $1.05. There was 
a man who had journeyed in the same way from just under Mount 
Everest, a five or six days' journey. His stock was four Roman- 
nosed sheep and half-a-dozen Nepaulese knives. The sheep, 
which had been the pack-horses for his knives and provender, are 
worth three rupees each, and the knives one. The dealers were 
generally squatted on the ground, with their little stores in bas- 
kets or on mats before them. Their worldly wealth was small, 
but they had a contented look. 

It made us, on arrival, almost blush to permit a good-looking, 
soft-eyed girl take our satchels from the station to the hotel. One 
of them makes our arms ache to carry a hundred or so yards, yet 
this little girl swung two from her forehead, climbed nimbly the 
high hill to the hotel, a few hundred yards off, and was perfectly 
satisfied when we gave her two annas, or five cents. There are 
many fine rides in the neighborhood of Darjeeling ; one, through 
a dense forest on a steep mountain side, gave us a fine insight 
into the growth of these latitudes. So close and dense is the 
forest that the sun never penetrates to the ground, and a fallen 
stick never dries. The rainfall here is about 125 inches a year ; 
the soil is as rich as loam can be made, and the forest vegetation 
simply astonishing. 

We reached Darjeeling exactly 24 hours after leaving Calcutta. 
The gray and green mountains around were visible, but thick 
clouds shrouded the snow-clad frozen heights. Our landlord said 
it was rapidly turning colder, and the morrow would be bright. 
We went to bed to hope and dream. I was awakened just before 
five by the mournful howling and queer chattering barkings of 
jackals close to my window. It seemed to me there was a pack, 



1 86 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

but I had an indistinct recollection that where two or three of 
these brutes are gathered together much noise is there with them. 
I went to the front of the house, and before me rose the viceroy 
of mountains — mighty Kunchinjinga. His glaciered peak caught 
the pale rays of the ascending morn, and sent them back as if 
from a rugged mass of cold, burnished silver. Grand and gloomy, 
he pierced the sky, a sceptred monarch. To his right and to his 
left stood his royal aids, each succeeding one a little lower than 
the last. For half a hundred miles these royal attendants stood 
in grand array, each a king, and crowned in silvered diadems. I 
could scarcely tear myself away, but looking to the north I saw a 
clear sky over the lofty foot-hills, and had reason to think the 
monarch of all was unclouded. 

I aroused the boys, and ordered ponies out. We drank a cup 
of hot tea, mounted our ponies, and were quickly tearing like 
madmen through the crisp frosty air, up the pretty gravel roads, 
along the mountain side, toward Tiger Hill, from whose sum- 
mit, 9,000 feet high, we might catch the rising sun as he gives his 
morning kiss to the world's acknowledged monarch — imperial 
Everest. Our coolies afoot, one to each horse, tried to keep pace 
with us, but the ponies were brave little fellows, and we three, 
though not at all first-class equestrians, were racing to beat the sun, 
and paused not to consider Uiat the narrow steep roadways were 
frosted and icy, and that a single misstep might send us hundreds 
of feet down the precipitous gorges yawning far below. Wildly 
we galloped on. We reached diverging paths. We knew not 
which to take. Two of the coolies were far behind, but one 
bright, lithe, young Nepaulese was panting lOO yards back. 
Glorious Kunchinjinga was now catching the early dawn. The 
boy came up. I made signs for him to take me by the hand. On 
we rushed. My tawny boy took strides unknown since classic 
footmen thus ran by the side of mounted soldiers. But his young 
mountain limbs were unequal to the task. Johnnie, who is ever 
ready to lend a helping hand, now offered two helping legs. He 
put the boy on his horse and, taking my hand, ran for a half- 
mile ; they then exchanged places. On we dashed, riding harder 
than ever, for a fleecy cloud resting high over Kunchinjinga's 
snowy peak was dyed in rosy pink. The sun would soon be up, 
and might throw a blush upon Everest's brow, and we not be 
there to see it. The road was now climbing Mount Sinchal, a 
little lower than Tiger Hill, and on the way to it. From it 
Everest is seen nearly as well as from the other. Our boy could 
not hold to me along the narrow ragged path. Trusting to our 
mountain craft we left him, and rode as hard up the side as our 
panting ponies could bear us. We reached the summit ; we 
turned to the northward and there, far away, over a depression in 
the lofty gray mountain spur of Kunchinjinga, stood apparently 
close together three burnished snowy peaks. The centre one was 



THE WORLD'S MONARCH, EVEREST. 187 

Everest, just catching the mellow tint which precedes the rising 
of the sun. We had won the race ; we had beaten old Sol ! 

I sat upon my panting horse, my heart too full for speech. I 
had dreamed of yon far-off frozen pinnacle, and had yearned to 
see it ere I died ; had yearned, but hardly hoped. Countless 
thousands of men had fought and battled that they might win 
the laurel wreath from human kind, but the world had not yet 
determined, and never would, who had been its greatest warrior. 
Countless thousands of men had racked the aching brain, had burned 
midnight oil, and had worn their souls away that they might win 
the laurel wreath from human kind, but the world had not and 
never will decide who had been the sweetest songster, the grandest 
poet, the loftiest orator, the smoothest writer, or the profoundest 
thinker. Man's ambition — his love of glory — is but a mockery, a 
delusive snare, so fragile are the foundations, so evanescent the 
superstructure, of his fame. Accident or purchased support lifts 
the all-unworthy to giddy heights ; calumny, detraction, and self- 
ish envy gnaw away the keystone of the arch over which honest 
merit climbs into the light. Purchased history draws a sponge 
over the record of noble deeds, and distils from a lie a figment 
with which to swell pigmy actions into heroic achievements. 
Even if true worth should win its place on the historic page or 
have its record deep cut into monumental stone, the stoutest 
book written by the muse of history easily melts into smoke, and 
the hardest marble quickly crumbles into dust. But yonder 
mighty pile had its foundations welded in the white heat of the 
world's ever-burning central fires. Its corner-stones were laid 
over the earth's solid arch. Its superstructure was spread with 
cement crystallized by the breath of the Mighty Chemist of the 
boundless universe. It knows no peer, it brooks no rival, and the 
world concedes its supremacy — a supremacy which can know no- 
derogation until the ribs of the earth shall give way, and its high 
places shall sink into its bowels ; when the dark depths of oceans 
shall be lifted into heights, and the seas shall give back to light 
the buried cities whose as yet unattained knowledge lived in 
Egyptian tradition and Indian legend, and has furnished the 
nations and peoples with their many religions and their countless 
superstitions. Until then proud Everest will rule, the one loftiest 
imperial chief, or until, in the crash of worlds, this globe of ours 
shall be scattered into cometic dust. 

We looked now to the far-off peak in the northward, then to 
the glaciered heights of the next highest, spread out at the north- 
east. The sky was absolutely clear, save only the filmy cloud 
which poised like a lifted veil over Kunchinjinga's highest peak. 
It grew each minute redder as the sun climbed higher. After a 
few moments we turned our back to Everest and galloped towards 
Tiger Hill summit, but looked over our shoulders each minute to 
keep the snowy peaks in view. The morning light crept down the 



i88 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

mountain side and lighted up the deep valleys far below us. The 
cloud over the viceroy began to catch a golden hue. We paused 
and looked back : a slight flush was upon Everest. The flush 
grew more mellow. We looked and a yellowish brush was drawn 
across the pinnacle. We turned toward east of north. A flood 
of rosy hue was upon Kunchinjinga. Again we turned toward 
the west of north. We were just in time, for Everest's peak was 
a burnished point of golden light. The sun was soon shining 
upon the two mighty ones. 

We dismounted, and led our ponies leisurely to the top. We 
were now nearly 9,000 feet up, and had a glorious panorama 
spread around us. Far below us were deep valleys green in virgin 
forest, or bright in hamlet and plantation. White bungalows 
were stretched along the ridge back of Darjeeling. Tea-factories 
and tea-shrubs brightened the side of the lofty hill toward us, and 
a Bhootan village was picturesque upon the almost precipitous 
end of the spur. Lofty dark-green mountains lay in a confused 
pile between the valley under us and the snowy range some 40 
miles away. To the south, through the pass we had climbed the 
day before, the great plain was stretched, its rivers and fields and 
jungle patches where nearest us but dimly seen, and vanishing in 
the distance where all was swallowed in dusty smoke. The air was 
crisp, a hoar-frost was white upon fallen leaves and low bushes ; 
a little pool a few feet across had a filmy coating of ice. We 
walked about the little level to keep warm. It was a glorious 
morning, and a glorious vision. I felt that if I could but keep 
pace with the sun I would like to get home in a half-day, and thus 
make this the culminating point in my " race with the sun." 

We had two splendid days at Darjeeling, watching the fine tints 
upon the 12,000 feet of eternal snows along the great range when 
the sun was sinking ; watching the gray silver tone when the 
niorning moon was shining upon them ; and watching the rosy 
tints mellowing into a delicate orange when the sun was rising. 
We took a wild ride along a narrow mountain road through vir- 
gin forest jungle, and left the picturesque city with regret. The 
ride down the narrow-gauge rail was much finer than the ascent. 
We could see where we were going, and could look upon the 
bending, winding, and doubling of the road, and comprehend the 
daring engineering skill which laid it out far better than when go- 
ing up. A train comes down the road nearly every day by gravi- 
tation alone. Indeed our own train practically did the same. 
Our iron horse did not take his drinks a fifth as often as he had 
done on his upward bound. 

And now something of the society of Calcutta, and I shall have 
done. The Europeans live in considerable style, own fair horses, 
and the ladies are finely dressed. All have a large array of serv- 
ants, whose demeanor toward their employers is more servile 
than was ever that of the slaves of our Southern States. This 



DINNER WITH THE VICEROY. 189 

perhaps is entirely outward, and has characterized for ages the 
deportment of all inferiors toward their superiors. The foreigners 
look in good health, but are guarded to make but little violent 
bodily exertion, and none in the sunshine. The children are 
fairly ruddy up to four or five years of age. After that they are 
pale, and it is thought not safe to attempt to rear them here. 
They become debilitated, and painfully lacking in vital energy. 
All avoid great exposure to the sun, even at this season. We are 
constantly warned on this point. 

The day after our first arrival here, I called upon the secretary 
of Lord DufTerin, Viceroy, and presented a special letter I had; I 
then disclosed my intention to leave the next day for the Hima- 
layas. This was just at noon. When I went to my room from 
the lunch-table, I found an invitation from the Earl and Countess 
of Dufferin to dinner that evening at 8 o'clock. On the invitation 
were the words : "Mess dress." I do not know what they meant, 
for I found the company in what seemed full evening dress. 
Lord and Lady Dufferin received me with great cordiality. I had 
met them years ago, but only casually. The dining-room is a 
very fine one, handsomely decorated. Stalwart servants in brilliant 
red stood one for each guest, and behind the earl several splendid 
fellows, I think of his guard, in dazzling crimson. The table, at 
which there were 18 plates, was brilliantly lighted with candles 
in three lofty branching candelabra of 12 and 18 lights. The por- 
celain and glass were of costly pattern and ware. A large quan- 
tity of plate, and spurs, horseshoes, and roses, all of gold, of great 
value were the table decorations. I conducted to the table Lady 
Helen Blackwood, the Earl's very distinguished-looking daughter, 
I sitting next to the countess ; both were very affable. Opposite, 
across the narrow way of the table, sat the Earl and the beautiful 
young Duchess of Montrose. The menu was excellent, and the 
cuisine perfect. The Earl was exceedingly kind, and gave evidence 
during our talk of the tact which has so marked his long and suc- 
cessful career. We left the table early, to drive to a Shakespearian 
reading at the institute. The hall was well filled, seats being re- 
served for the viceroyal party at the front, a sofa in the imme- 
diate front being for the Earl and Countess. With great courtesy 
the Earl placed me at his side, his lady taking a chair. During the 
intermission he passed to several ladies, having a few pleasant 
words for each, and the Countess sat with me. When the reading 
was over, every one arose and stood until the Earl and Countess 
and aids passed out. When they drove off the aid in waiting, Captain 
Gore, informed me that he was ordered to get immediate informa- 
tion of our return from Darjeeling. I promised to inform him by 
telegraph. I give these little incidents to show the politeness of 
the vicegerent of the empress in her vast Indian dominions. 

On our return from the mountains we found invitations to 
a state ball on the 12th. On the afternoon of the day before, the 



I90 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Countess gave her annual garden party. All who have the entree 
of the government house have the right to attend. There was a 
brilliant assemblage of people, including a large number of na- 
tives, in gorgeous attires of silk, gold, and diamonds. The Earl 
and Lady Dufferin made- the boys feel easy when presented. 
They wished us to be present at the state ball, regretting that we 
would see so few of the leading natives. But they have adopted 
the rule to invite none to the balls who will not bring their wives. 
This the majority of natives cannot do, their wives being kept in 
absolute seclusion. I was told this rule was adopted at Govern- 
ment House because of some insulting criticisms made by natives 
on the decollete costumes of European ladies. Their own wives 
being absent, they were free in bandying ribald jests. We saw 
eight chieftains from the mountains near Afghanistan. The Earl 
told me they could bring into the field 25,000 good fighters. 
They were dressed in plain flowing garments, wore massive tur- 
bans, and were profoundly respectful to the viceroy, but had none 
of that servile manner which characterizes those who live on 
plains. They were being carried over the country at the expense 
of the government in a sort of pleasure excursion, for the purpose, 
I suspect, of impressing them with English power. 

The next night we attended the ball. It was a very brilliant 
affair. The ballrooms occupy the entire third story of the large 
palace. The consular representatives, except our own, were in 
state dress. The large number of officers in their red coats cov- 
ered with gold lace and cords were very bright and rich in appear- 
ance, and did more to make the room brilliant than did the 
beautiful dresses of the ladies. Many of these, however, were in 
gorgeous array and wore many diamonds, and some of great cost. 
A native lady, the Maharanne, the pretty wife of Maharajah 
Kuch Behar, wore diamonds of great beauty and enormous 
value. Lord Dufferin's court dress was very rich, and the costume 
of the Countess was both beautiful and costly — jewels on her neck, 
and a coronet of stars in brilliants lifting from her brow. The 
governors of Bengal and Bombay were over for the occasion, and 
both in court dress. Lady Reay, wife of Bombay's governor, was 
beautifully attired. Lady Dufferin presented me. She kindly 
invited me to call when in Bombay. Taken altogether, the ball 
was most brilliant. In the dining-room, on the main floor, a buf- 
fet was spread during the whole evening. Champagne and other 
wines were freely offered. A little after 12, all went to the rooms 
in the entresol to a full supper, at tables where all could be seated. 
These rooms are large enough to seat 1,000. The menu was ex- 
tensive, and champagne flowed recklessly. When the viceroyal 
party and the governor left, all arose and stood till they had gone 
out. 

When taking my leave I asked Countess Dufferin if she had any 
message to send to America. Her handsome face beamed with a 



A STATE BALL. 191 

bright smile when she said : " Tell the people of America I have 
a warm place in my heart for them." The Earl, when shaking my 
hand, said the thing he most missed here was " the ability to run 
over the line, as he often did from Canada, to get the warm treat- 
ment he always received from Americans." He certainly possesses 
tact, and a kindly heartiness with it. 

On leaving I saw a thing queerly Oriental. The entrance to the 
palace is on the ground-floor in an archway under the great por- 
tico and steps, which are used alone for state purposes. Along 
the outer wall of this archway, there were facing us 200 
footmen or runners, squatted down upon their haunches in 
four long rows, as close as they could be packed, like so many 
frogs. They were awaiting their respective masters to run before 
or beside their carriages going homeward. Style is somewhat 
measured by the number of runners. They looked bright in their 
many colored turbans and various wrappings, but presented a 
most grotesque picture. I wrote till near daylight and every now 
and then paused to listen to the howling of Calcutta's hundreds, 
if not thousands, of scavengers — the night-prowling jackals. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CALCUTTA TO BENARES— THE HOLY CITY AND PILGRIMS— SACRED 

BATHING, AND BURNING CORPSES— SARNATH AND 

BUDDHISM— LUCKNOW AND CAWNPORE. 

Agra, India, Jattuary 20, 1888. 

From Calcutta to Benares by rail is 556 miles. The country 
at first, for 100 and more miles, is in general appearance and 
production practically the same as that on the road to Darjeeling, 
already described^ — a great flat plain with only a single eleva- 
tion — a short range of low hills lifting in a single ridge from the 
dead level. After running 100 and odd miles the plain looks 
very unproductive. The soil is a light-gray, and in the short cut 
rice paddies looks as if it could produce but little. Large num- 
bers of cattle were browsing in the bare rice-fields and unculti- 
vated lands. How they find any thing nourishing I could not see. 
The ground looked absolutely bare, and yet the poor brutes were 
picking it over, if not licking it, and had not a starved condition, 
being fed, I suppose, night and morning. There had been no 
rain for some months, and all was dusty. Much of the land is in 
wheat. It grows very low in stalk, thin on the ground, and of 
short head. A couple of hundred miles from Calcutta the coun- 
try put on a greener appearance, in wheat, gram, castor-oil, 
dahl, pea, and poppy. Some of the fields of the latter at a 
distance in full flower looked like snow fields, so white and pure 
was the bloom. England will require long generations of piety 
to undo her great wrong in coining gold as she does out_ of the 
mania and misery of so many millions. Like the poppy flower, 
she boastfully spreads to the breeze a banner of light, while she 
kills and destroys in her greed. Her people decry the Yankee 
because he has such love for the almighty dollar. But, thank 
heaven ! America as an aggregation, as a nation, has nfever 
oppressed for gold. Her only semblance of a shame was slavery 
fastened upon her by English cupidity. England's opium policy 
is one of her shames. Preachers who believe in special providence 
and national retribution for national sins could pour from the 
pulpit fearful anathemas upon this sordid nation for its crime in 
encouraging for gain in gold the most frightful of all degrading 
vices. 

On the road we passed near coal-fields, said to be rich both in 

192 



BENARES, THE HOLY CITY. 193 

the quantity and quality of the yield. For the last 100 miles tow- 
ard Benares much of the country was very pretty. The mango 
and other orchards were abundant, and every plain had its many 
scattered trees. Barley was added as a growth, and was well 
headed and green. Hedges, where there were any, were of a 
prickly pear and cactus. The spider webs over them covered 
with dust looked like great gossamer veils spread over spiky 
frames. Rows of aloes or century plants lined the road. Now 
and then as far as the eye could reach, through openings in the 
trees, the prospect was that of a perfectly flat plain, relieved only 
by trees and villages. One odd thing is frequently seen — small 
round circles of mud wall topped by cactus, three to five feet 
high, and say four to six in diameter, and built for protection for 
young trees. They protect against intrusion and also against hot 
sun rays. The railroad is a good one, cars comfortable, and sta- 
tions handsome. Several fine school-houses with large and good 
grounds were seen. 

In 18^ hours we reached Benares, the Holy City of India; a 
city already old three centuries before Christ, and at one time 
consecrated by eight centuries of Buddhistic sway and sanctity, 
and followed by 17 known centuries of Brahminism. Here an- 
nually come pilgrims, probably a million or more, from all parts 
of India — the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the strong 
and the decrepit, crowded in railway cars, packed like hogs, or 
hobbling along dusty roads, suffering every kind of privation, 
spending the hoarded savings of years of toil, dirty and weary, for 
they perform no sort of ablution from the time they leave their 
far-off homes until they can wash away the filth of the body and 
the pollution of the soul in the cleansing water of the sacred 
Ganges. 

Here comes the prince in his silken robes, with diamonds and 
rubies in his coffers, ready, if occasion arises, to have them glitter 
upon his neck and arms ; and there a poor farm peasant in a 
scanty cotton rag. Here the bold soldier who would quail in the 
presence of no danger, and there the high-born woman who 
trembles if looked upon by any man not her father, brother, or 
lord. They know that disease is rife in the midst of huge multi- 
tudes, yet they falter not, or rather come all the more cheerfully, 
for to die in the Holy City, to have their cold limbs laved in holy 
water, to be burned on the banks of the sacred river, and have 
their ashes scattered upon its broad stream — these things will in- 
sure them a blessed eternity. Strange faith ! Unconquered and 
unconquerable. Blind, abject superstition ! Slavish yet sublime, 
because of its human intensity. For countless ages this thing has 
been going on year after year. It began before history had 
learned to grave imperishable annals. Its origin is as impenetra- 
ble as the Himalayan heights, where their ruling god sits in his. 
frozen home. Milhons as countless as are the sands reached by 



194 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the ever-surging swell of old ocean, have believed in and per- 
formed these pious duties with sublime earnestness. We call 
these things grovelling idolatry. They say our faith is a silly 
superstition. Who can say to another : My way is all right, your 
way is all wrong ? One thing, however, we can determine — charity 
to the opinions of others, and kindness and good-will to all, are 
teachings of all religions which acknowledge a supreme ruler, and 
make them all somewhat akin to the divine. 

The railway enters Benares over a magnificent iron bridge just 
completed across the Ganges. It springs by noble spans along 
great stone piers, the foundations of some of which are sunken 
230 feet below the bed of the river. We paused at its northern 
end to let off several hundred pilgrims. A strange sight they 
presented in their various conditions. There were old women, 
almost bent double with infirmities or age ; there were young 
women with half-naked babies straddled on their hips, and lead- 
ing others but a few years older ; there were proud men, of 
noble, manly bearing, and poor men, cringing and servile in their 
poverty ; there was opulent comfort, with servants bearing its 
bedding and its fine gear; there was abject poverty so weak that 
it staggered under the weight of a single basket or bundle which 
contained its owner's worldly wealth. All, when stepping from 
the crowded cars, turned wistfully toward the holy city ; their 
eyes betrayed the delight felt that now at last they were about 
to bathe in this holiest of holy rivers ; and that the bath would 
cleanse them from earthly pollution, and would prepare them for 
eternal bliss. 

We went a couple or more miles to another station behind the 
town. There in line were red-coated cavalrymen to be an escort 
of honor for Bombay's governor, Lord Reay, and his lady. They 
•were conducted to a victoria drawn by four horses by the heir 
apparent of the Maharajah of Benares, whose low turban cap was 
Avrapped in a cord of diamonds and pearls, and around whose 
neck hung a necklace two or more inches deep, a mass of enor- 
mous brilliants. His dress was flashing in gold and jewels. His 
sword-hilt glistened in gems. I could not tell if the jewels were 
of first water. If they were, then this dusky prince must have 
had a million or more upon his person. Strange contrast, this 
lavish extravagance and luxury, with the poverty, squalor, and 
misery we had left two miles below. 

We found a very nice hotel. Hotels in India are the product 
of the last few years. Early in the morning we added an ^^^ to 
our " chota haziri " (early breakfast of tea and coffee and bread), 
and with a guide proceeded to the river, and then on a row-boat 
to see the points of interest best seen from the water. To our 
surprise we found the stream clear and of a greenish tinge. From 
a point nearly opposite the lower end of the town it presents a 
most picturesque appearance. It is built on a bank 60 to 80 feet 



FIL GKIMS BA THING. 195 

high above the water, and extends along this height fully three 
miles. This entire stretch is covered with what appears to be a 
succession of palaces of stone, with domes, conical temples, and 
minarets wedged in among them in confusion, yet artistic confu- 
sion. Under many of these palatial buildings are walls orna- 
mented with buttresses and relieved by loop-holes and small 
windows. They lift from high-water mark. Here and there 
small temples of conical form crowd down to the present low- 
water line. All of these are of beautiful design and of elaborate 
ornamentation, and some richly gilt. Every few hundred 
yards apparently coming out of handsome portals in the 
palaces, are narrow flights of steps, spreading as they descend, 
until toward the water's edge they are broad enough to belong 
to royal residences. Now and then are elegant buildings rising 
out of the water's edge, with their turreted upper stories still be- 
low the buildings on the high bank. One of these structures of 
large front has slid into the river in such way that its rear is 
sunken several feet, its well-laid front, except for one break, 
looking as if it had been chiselled from solid stone — so solid that 
it has stood for perhaps a century, and will yet last for other 
centuries in spite of being fully 30 degrees out of level. Crowds 
of people were descending or ascending these many flights of 
steps, and in front of them were hundreds bathing in the sacred 
stream. Our boat was broad-keeled, with a sort of arched roof, 
on which we sat, while several oarsmen slowly stemmed the strong 
current close to the bathers. 

The view of the city from the distance was very fine, and the 
bathing pilgrims when closely seen were wonderfully strange and 
interesting. They were of all ages and of both sexes, and of many 
conditions: the well-to-do and the very poorest; the most robust 
and the emaciated and diseased ; the most athletic — their half- 
naked forms fit models for a sculptor's chisel, — and the deformed 
and shrunken-limbed ascetic. Some sprang down the long 
flights of steps as if fatigue had never been known ; others were 
tottering and leaning upon long staffs, or were supported by 
friends or servants. Some entered the water with joyous faces, 
and eyes sparkling with hope ; others slowly and reverently, as 
if they could scarcely be sufificiently thankful and humble enough 
for the boon they were about to enjoy. After wading out to 
nearly waist-deep, all would place their hands reverently to- 
gether before them, utter a prayer, evidently in deep earnest- 
ness, and then dip themselves, generally, I thought, three times. 
After this they washed themselves with great care, scraping the 
bottoms of the feet, and scrubbing the inside of the mouth as if 
doing their best to take some thing out of it. Many had flow- 
ers as offerings ; these they threw in one by one as they prayed. 

The stairways of which I spoke are the ends of narrow streets 
and are called " ghats," and all bearing individual names. The 



196 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

several sects bathe at different " ghats." Many of those we saw 
were so weak from age or from disease that they must have suf- 
fered to no small extent in the chill water of this season. But 
no amount of chill would cause them to abstain. Persons about 
to die are brought to the stream to expire with their feet in the 
water. After cleansing themselves the pilgrims wash their gar- 
ments and fill a vessel with water to sprinkle with it certain of 
the statues or figures of gods in the city ; for the wily priest has 
fully impressed all with the benefit arising from, or the necessity 
of, visiting its many sanctuaries and receive fees for their holy 
ministrations. Before departing for their homes all have certain 
marks put upon their foreheads by the priests, to show that the 
great pilgrimage has been made. There are now large numbers 
of pilgrims in the city, but we were advised to remain a few days 
longer, until, owing to the eclipse of the moon, there would be at 
least 100,000 more than usual. 

At three of the ghats crematory piles were erected ; at each of 
two there was one body, but at the other, five pyres were burn- 
ing, and two other corpses were wrapped in white cloth, one ly- 
ing with the lower limbs in the water, to be cremated when the 
pile should be ready. A sewer from the city was emptying its 
reeking, filthy sewage into the river not 20 feet above the spot 
where the body was lying, and several bathers were gulping 
down great mouthfuls of the water about ten feet below the 
dead body; — strange infatuation ! Not far from this and above 
it was a deep tank in which was as nasty a compound as one 
could imagine; — it was, say, 15 by 30 feet in dimensions. Its 
waters had not been changed for months. Thousands have 
bathed in it, and great quantities of marigolds, and other flowers, 
milk, and confections are daily thrown into it as offerings, until it 
lx)oks as fetid as a cesspool ; yet dainty women, whose necks, 
arms, and ankles are weighted down with rarest jewels, lay aside 
their outer garments of embroidered gauze and silk, and lave 
their faces and rounded forms in the stinking slime, and believe 
themselves washed from impurities, and are followed by withered 
old men and women, whose very forms seem reeking with fetid 
disease. 

We rowed slowly up the city's front, now on close observation 
bereft of much of its picturesque beauty, for the majority of the 
palatial buildings are in more or less dilapidated condition, not 
observable from a more distant view. These fine places are resi- 
dences built by rajahs and other Indian princes from every part 
of the land, and are occupied when the owners come to use the 
holy water, and, if possible, to be the places in which they may 
take their flight from sublunary things. One very pretty and 
costly edifice was the property of Nana Sahib, the butcher of 
1857. After going up stream to the last ghat, we descended near 
the farther shore, but the illusion had been somewhat marred by 



SAJiNA TH AND B UDDHISM. 1 97 

the too close observation. Yet I shall always remember Benares 
as one of the picturesque cities of the world. 

We visited many parts of the city and the sacred wells, and 
Johnnie came to the conclusion that one of the big baboons at 
the monkey temple, which slipped up behind him and snatched 
a guava from his hand, was slicker even than an Italian boot- 
black from the neighborhood of the levee in Chicago. One 
peculiar Nepaulese temple which we saw, is styled "picturesque," 
from a frieze of queer ornamentations, which lady travellers are 
never shown. Our guide, an orthodox Brahmin, gave with much 
gusto a racy explanation of them, evidently glad to hit hard the 
schismatic worshippers. From the lofty minaret of a mosque 
close by the river, we had a fine view of the compactly built 
native city and the country for many miles round, green in barley 
and grain, and studded by clumps of tropical fruit-trees. I did 
not enjoy this as much as I would have done a few years ago, for 
it is hard for a man of 63 to climb 150 feet over high steps, not 
two feet wide, winding around a spindle only 16 inches in diameter. 

This city is noted for its workers in brass, many of their prod- 
ucts being as beautiful as chased gold, and costing less than 
Britannia ware with us. We could have spent several days here, 
but the sun will be north of the equator before we shall be out 
of India. At the station we found the Governor of Bombay was 
again to be our co-traveller. The young Hindoo heir to the 
maharajahship was there to see him off. When he had seen his 
visitors seated he happened to stop near where we were standing. 
I had never shaken hands with a man whose garments glistened 
with $1,000,000 worth of diamonds. I boldly walked up to him 
and introduced myself. He seemed really glad to meet an 
American, and regretted I was going away, saying that he would 
be glad to see me again. The boys declared I had exhibited 
" gall " quite worthy of Chicago. 

But I had nearly forgotten to speak of Sarnath, the old 
Benares of many centuries ago. It lies some four miles out of 
the present city, and is all cultivated over, except where great 
heaps of broken brick, mark the spot where its costly edi- 
fices once stood. A lofty old round tower-looking structure, 
about 100 feet in diameter, and over that in height, solid mass of 
brick, marks the spot where Gautama (Siddartha of the Bud- 
dhist) taught his creed, and probably beneath it were buried some 
of his bones or hair. A part of its outer casing of stone is in 
good condition, exhibiting exquisite design and finish in its elab- 
orate and intricate carving. It is said to be over 2,000 years old, 
and is probably the original from which the pagodas of Burmah 
were modelled, they however taking more of a bell form. It was 
a touching thing to sit under this old " stupa," and go back in 
fancy twenty odd centuries, and to imagine myself listening to 
the gentle tones of the man who abandoned the luxuries of 



198 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

princely possessions, the power of royal position, to become 
for long years a recluse ; left the couch on which Yasodara 
dreamed — " Yasodara of a form of heavenly mould ; a gait like 
Parati's ; eyes like a hind's in love time ; face so fair words can- 
not paint its spell " ; the idolized Prince abandoned all, that he 
might spin from his brain the thread which was to bind and unite 
man to his God. " In a wild and desolate spot far removed from 
men's abode, the brown sands his seat, the blue sky his only 
covering, for long years, in silent meditation, Siddartha— 

" Lord Buddha, sate the scorching summers through, 
The driving rains, the chilly dawns and eves ; 
"Wearing for all men's sake the yellow robe ; 
Eating in beggar's guise the scanty meal 
Chance-gathered from the charitable ; at night 
Couched in grass, homeless, alone ; while yelped 
The sleepless jackals round his cave, or coughs 
Of famished tiger from the thicket broke. 

Subduing that fair body born for bliss 

With fast and frequent watch and search intense 

Of silent meditation, so prolonged 

That at times while he mused — as motionless 

As the fixed rock his seat — the squirrel leaped 

Upon his knee, the timid quail led forth 

Her brood between his feet, and blue doves picked 

The rice-grains from the bowl beside his hand " — 

and who, after he believed he had found the soft, silken bond, 
gave himself up to a life of labor and deprivation, while he 
preached his beautiful philosophy, teaching loveliness of spirit, 
absolute purity of life, love to God, and a boundless charity tow- 
ard all living things. Here, close by, he lived for many years, 
preaching a religion which has more votaries than any other 
faith professed by men ; here he preached that exquisite charity 
which can give pain to nothing breathing ; which can take life 
from nothing into which God has blown the breath of life ; which 
teaches that no living thing is so degraded that it may not hold 
a soul which God has created and which can never die. Here he 
lived, who to-day is worshipped by countless millions as a god. 
Here he walked and here he sat, uttering those maxims which 
soon crystallized into a faith, and is claimed to be the " Light of 
Asia." I sat and thought. Around me Vv'ere more than a dozen 
little boys and girls, bright, but all begging — lithe, healthy and 
pretty, but all steeped in poverty and ignorance, and all followers 
of Buddha, or rather the children of his followers. How much 
had his teachings to do with their degradation ? Though his 
philosophy be so beautiful ; though his religion be so full of 
charity — that quality which proves that man is akin to Deity; — 
though he taught love for God and for every thing He has cre- 
ated, yet his religion has depressed and repressed his followers. 



LIGHT OF ASIA. 199 

He taught that a h'fe of purity was a life of tranquillity and of 
calm, inactive reflection. 

Man must constantly step forward. He must not stand still. 
The moment he pauses in an upward and onward progress, that 
moment the dead weights of the earth, from which he sprang, 
begin to pull him downward. His mental as well as his physi- 
cal being sprang from a germ of life, — side by side with which 
was the germ of decay. When growth stops decay begins its 
deadly work. Gautama may have caused the " Light of Asia " to 
spread over the mighty East. It was a light, beautiful, poetic, 
calm, and sweet, but it was not a light which warms the torpid 
into activity. It lacked glow and warmth. The pale moon rises 
in the east, spreads its mild light over a sleeping world, and all 
nature continues its slumber. The sun rises ; its intense rays 
not only light but warm nature, and all its children awaken from 
slumber into activity, man and beast, tree and flower. Buddhism 
may have been a " Light of Asia," but it was not till, close to the 
Mediterranean, a new and better brightness was born, that " The 
Light of the world " arose. Under the one light — the sweet, calm 
moonlight — the earth lies in the lap of a lethargy, from v/hich it 
may not for ages free itself. Under the other — the warm, burn- 
ing sunlight — the west marches with giant strides. 

Among the debris of old Sarnath, growing from a poor soil, 
half made of broken brick, there is a scanty growth of grass, 
very thin and now without a spear over an inch long. We saw 
men and women with a sort of chisel cutting this meagre grass 
up by the roots for food for cattle. A man cannot gather two 
bushels of this in a day. And yet these men live. Ah ! the 
changeless East. Is there no resurrection for its poverty-stricken 
children ? When will there be a dawn from the true light, not of 
Asia but of the world ? 

From Calcutta to Benares we had passed over 500 and odd miles 
of flat land densely populated. The peasants were as poor as 
people can be and live. The villages were miserable mud huts, 
or rather hovels. They draw water from wells in buckets, 
either by their own hands or with oxen yoked to the long 
well-rope, to fill the ditches which irrigate the fields, or they 
scoop it from bayous or canals with canoe-like troughs, one 
end of the trough being at the edge of the ditch, the other 
end dipping into the water, and lifted by a sweep like the old 
well-sweeps at home, long since discarded as being too labori- 
ous and slow a process even for supplying the kitchen and the 
wash-tub. These people cut their rice and wheat with a knife 
hardly half so good as the reap-hook of our grandfathers. 
They thresh out the grain by whipping the sheaf over a stone 
or by beating it with bamboo flails, and winnow it by throwing 
it into the air, over a dirt floor. They carry the winnowed crop 
to market on the backs of bullocks or little asses, or if they be 



200 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

of a richer class, in wooden-wheeled (all wood) carts built on 
models in use centuries ago. With boundless plains where for- 
ests might be grown, they cook their meals over fires made of 
burnt straw and grass, or of cakes of dried cow droppings. This 
they gather up and knead with their hands, and then cover the 
sides of the houses with the dainty cakes to dry, as we ornament 
our parlor walls with pretty placques. The cow and the goat, 
the buffalo and the sheep, the donkey and the chicken all share 
with the master his miserable abode, faring as does his wife and 
his little naked ones, only having a larger share of the house for 
their sleeping-rooms. When will the real " Light of Asia " arise 
for its poor and miserable children? 

On a train crowded with pilgrims, all with marks upon their 
foreheads, proving that they had satisfied the priests of holy 
Benares, we traversed a country in no way different from that 
we had seen a few days before, and after a run of 190 odd miles 
reached Lucknow, famous in song and in the history of the fights 
of 1857. It was the capital of Oude, or properly, " Oudh," and 
with its 250,000 people does a large amount of Indian produc- 
tion — carpet and brasswork, gold lace and embroidery and tinsel. 
It was the glory of its kings, until, after the mutiny, it was 
swept into the absolute ownership of the sea-girt kingdom of the 
west. Its people were poor and oppressed, but its kings sup- 
ported a luxury and jewelled magnificence, unsurpassed in India 
since the mogul sultans built mausoleums at a cost of countless 
millions in honor of their dead queens. The remains of mag- 
nificent palaces and splendid tombs attest its former grandeur. 

A great many, if not all, of the king's residences have been 
razed to the ground, but a vast quadrangle of palatial edifices 
and detached palaces — the homes of the begums (queens) and 
their great retinue of attending ladies and their servants — show 
that the late king,' for so many years a state prisoner at Calcutta, 
had good reasons for regretting his former splendor, and for ha- 
ting his despoilers. He had no hand in the mutiny of '57, and 
was known to be friendly to England. But his independent 
kingdom, with its 14,000,000 of people, ready to be led by 
ambitious intriguers, was dangerous to the peace of India, and 
England, which rarely hesitates when her policy requires the de- 
struction of a power which may become hostile, gave to the king 
a city for his prison bounds, and added his jewels and posses- 
sions to the diadem soon to deck an empress' brow. Several of 
the mausoleums and mosques of Lucknow are exceedingly fine 
and well repay a visit, and the crowded, narrow streets of its na- 
tive quarters give food for more than one day's digestion. 

We gave a day to Cawnpore, 30 miles farther on. This is a 
city of 140,000 souls, has a large native leather industry and some 
fine rice mills, and a jute manufactory which was very interest- 
ing, and where we had an opportunity of watching nimble- 



CAWNPORE. NANA SAHIB'S CRIME. 201 

fingered boys and men mingling with the buzz and whirl of 
steam-driven machinery. Wc drove over the vast military can- 
tonment ; admired its comfortable officers' bungalows, and its 
long line of large two-story barracks, arranged en eclielon on one 
side of the great parade-ground. Here the fury of the mutiny 
was unrelenting, and the tiger-like heart of Nana Sahib had an 
opportunity to exhibit its ferocious quality. I stood by the 
monument which covers the great well into which he hurled 700 
men, women, and children — unoffending non-combatants, mur- 
dered in cold blood — and many thrown in while yet alive, some 
of the children as yet unhurt. I then ceased to wonder at the 
bitter feeling so many English here have for the natives. The 
memory of the butcheries of '57 is yet fresh in their hearts. A 
colossal winged angel in pure white stands over the spot, and in 
marble beauty looks down with touching pity, which every one 
must feel who recalls the horrible massacre. 

From Cawnpore to Agra, 107 miles, we travelled by night. " 



CHAPTER XX. 

LAHORE TO PESHAWUR— CENTRAL ASIATICS— WESTERN HIMA- 
LAYAS— CASHMIR— A WILD RIDE. 

Peshawur, India, January 30, 1888. 

I AM writing this at Peshawur, about 1,600 miles to the north- 
west of Calcutta, and close to the border-line of Afghanistan, that 
bone of contention on which Russia and England have been so 
long mouthing, and over which they will growl for probably many 
years to come. We have passed through the heart of the mighty 
empire of the moguls of Plindoostan, whose luxury and splendor 
made the fairy tales of the 1,001 Arabian Nights a reality, 
and has furnished to the minds of Europeans and Americans 
their idea and ideal of " Orientalism." We have passed days in 
studying the remains of their palaces, thrones, and tombs, monu- 
ments of a magnificence which makes Moore's gorgeous lines 
truthful descriptions rather than dreams of Hibernian imagination. 
We have visited their three capitals, Agra in the south, Delhi the 
central, and Lahore in the north. In these they built palaces 
and mosques which are dreams of beauty, inlaying their stone or 
alabaster walls with precious marbles. They built thrones for 
themselves and tombs for their predecessor or their queens, of 
an' architectural beauty never excelled, with gems and jewels for 
adornment, and lavished upon them in elaborate finish the spoils 
of conquered kingdoms. Although the bulk of the work per- 
formed in building these structures was that of the unpaid multi- 
tude, yet so rich were they in construction that millions were 
expended to furnish material which could not be crystallized from 
the sweat of the down-trodden people. One is almost lost in 
amazement that men, though kings, could be so reckless in their 
extravagance, and can account for it only by recalling the fact 
that in their veins flowed the blood of Genghis Khan and Timur, 
whose visions of splendor were as boundless as the vast steppes 
in which they were born, and whose luxuriousness was in reverse 
proportion to the poverty of their past. They were like beggars 
mounted upon winged steeds. 

We have tried to move as leisurely as was compatible with 
what we had to do within a given period, but so thick are the 
relics of past grandeur that they have been constantly crowding 



INDIAN WHEAT. 203 

upon us, and are still so crowding our memories that I would not 
hazard the attempt to tell of them were I not reminded of Shake- 
speare's advice to the traveller : " Think of thy friends when hap- 
pily thou seest some noteworthy object in thy travels, and wish 
them partakers of thy happiness." 

We found the same flat country which I mentioned in my last, 
and the same productions, except as they gradually changed from 
those of the torrid zone to those of the more temperate as we 
moved northerly ; rice became scarcer, until it disappeared almost 
entirely, and wheat more and more took its place, and other small 
grain and seed replaced the sugar-cane, which is grown, however, 
far north, but rather for fodder and for being eaten green than 
for grinding. It seems to be the favorite sweet of all Indian peo- 
ple, and sticks of it are everywhere seen in the hands of men, 
women, and children, who bite it off as they walk, and up farther 
north it is peeled and cut into short bits and sold like candy. 
Near the city, where elephants are used, its leaves are their prin- 
cipal food. Large areas appeared planted in wheat after we left 
Delhi, until, on reaching the Punjab country, it is seen in broad 
expanses. This is not, however, because of large farms, for there 
are no such things in India, but there being no distinct demarka- 
tion between the lands of different owners, many fields appear as 
one. 

At Delhi we had our first rain since leaving the neighborhood 
of the equator. It continued for three days and extended over 
all northern India. It saved the wheat crop of this great com- 
petitor of our wide prairies. There had been no rain since Oc- 
tober, and there was good reason for fearing that the spring har- 
vest would be a total failure. We noticed the change immediately, 
even from the railway windows. There are two crops a year here, 
one sown in October and harvested in early spring ; the other in 
May and harvested in August. 

Our farmers need never fear Indian competition in good wheat. 
These people are too slovenly in their manner of cleaning it ever 
to send a good article to England, and, as the commissioner 
(governor) of this district told me, they will not change their 
habits. They hand-weed the fields, so that no foreign seeds mix 
with the wheat, but they clean it on the ground, and the middle- 
men throw in dirt and coarse sand to increase the weight. We 
have examined quite a quantity here in Peshawur in bags in the 
bazaar, and found it shamefully dirty. One seller wanted us to 
buy. I told him we were from Chicago in America. He inno- 
cently assured me that he would make his bags tight so that it 
could be taken home with us. I will explain that, in hand-weed- 
ing fields, every thing is saved ; what is pulled up becomes food 
for cattle. Another thing will ultimately tell against India as a 
wheat country. Manure is carefully picked up and dried for fuel. 
The land needs it and cannot get it, and cannot continue wheat- 



204 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

producing. Rice takes the bulk of its nourishment from water, 
and thrives on land which cannot produce wheat. Trees are 
scarce ; leaves, coarse grass, and excrement of cattle keep the 
natives in fuel. These people are poor beyond any others I have 
ever seen, and will not become well enough off to become land 
improvers. They are not lazy, they work hard but keep them- 
selves poor by the ceremonies which their very religion seems to 
make necessary when their children marry. This hardly seems 
credible, but they save almost exclusively for this purpose, and 
cover themselves with debt and mortgages when savings prove 
inadequate. A man's importance in his community seems to be 
measured by his display when his children marry. 

It is painful to look into the huts of the farmers and laborers. 
They are merely mud-walled pens, and lack every thing for com- 
fort. Here, to-night, I am shivering in the house before a wood 
fire, yet I am well clad. These people wear little more than a 
light cotton cloth, and fire-places and chimneys are unknown in 
the native house. They wrap up their heads and vital parts of 
the body leaving the legs nearly bare, and rarely cover the feet at 
all. They squat before their little huts around a mere skilletful 
of fire, and a few put a small pot of coals under their cotton cov- 
ering, and drawing this about them, husband the scanty heat. The 
pay of a cab- or cart-driver is from four to six rupees a month. A 
rupee is worth at present rate of exchange 34 cents of our money. 
Out of this he has to clothe and feed himself. We give our Eng- 
lish-speaking servant a rupee, and four annas a day for food. An 
anna is worth two and one-quarter cents. Thus he gets his food, 
even while travelling with us, for nine cents a day. But his 
wages are quite princely. The pay of a laborer on the construc- 
tion of railroads is three annas a day. That, too, between this and 
Lahore, where there is frost nearly every clear night from Decem- 
ber to February. 

One can scarcely realize when passing through much of this 
country that it is thickly peopled. One sees large areas of culti- 
vated lands, but apparently no houses. But every now and then, 
half-hidden among trees, one sees a mud wall 10 to 12 feet high, 
and covering some hundred feet, others 400 or 500 feet square. 
This mud wall contains a farm hamlet or village, and has 
within it little hovels and cow-yards for 12, 20, or more fami- 
lies. Women and children constantly ask for " backshish " 
(presents). They do it very good-naturedly, and never get angry 
when we drive them off with a good-humored thrust from our 
canes. About the large cities the old ruins cover many miles 
more or less cultivated, and with hovels among old crumbling 
walls. Along the roads in these, children by the dozen ran by 
our carriage crying " backshish " in all the tones possible to 
youngsters from three years old up to ten or more. Boys half- 
naked ; girls with rings in their ears and noses, and bracelets and 



INDIAN WIVES AND WIDOWS. 205 

anklets jingling. All have beautiful teeth, and grin and laugh and 
pat their stomachs to assure us they are quite empty, and some 
of them look as if ready for a collapse. A jollier set of beggars 
one never saw, and quite able to keep up with our carriage for a 
mile. A cent thrown to them makes them happy. A crack from 
the driver's whip, if not reaching their naked backs, makes them 
break into a peal of laughter. None are so poor that they do not 
put rings and bracelets on the girls. I had a woman beg of me 
to-day, and yet she must have had a dozen or more of these orna- 
ments. Much of the wealth of the family is thus carried on the 
females. When necessity pinches, they sell or pawn them. The 
women are thus the bankers of the men. 

The women in towns and villages above the coolie class rarely 
show their faces, and the better classes never. Some travellers 
speak of their peeping at one from under their veils, or from behind 
their latticed windows, and often coquettishly lifting the veil. 
From what I have seen and can learn from people who have long 
lived here, such coquetries are only indulged in by Nautch girls 
(dancing girls) of a low order showing themselves, or by a still 
worse class. The education of a woman is such that she honestly 
thinks herself degraded should she permit her face to be seen by 
a man ; rarely is it done, even to a father-in-law or brother-in-law, 
especially if the brother-in-law be older than her husband. A 
well-to-do Hindoo, with six brothers all younger than himself, 
told me he had seldom ever seen the face of a single one of his 
sisters-in-law, and when he had done so it was under peculiar cir- 
cumstances religiously permissible. But his brothers had seen his 
wife's face oftener. This thing is not simply a social custom ; it 
is mixed up with their religious requirements. Religion has a very 
powerful hold even on the men, who are generally more or less 
educated, for now common schools are throughout the country. 
But the women are wholly uneducated, except in religious rites 
and duties. With them their religion is all despotic and powerful, 
leading them in the past to the burning pile of their dead husband. 
That, however, was not always the cruel order of force, but was 
frequently eagerly sought by the victim, first because she believed 
it a religious duty, and next because the burdens, deprivations, 
and self-denials, forced upon a widow by inexorable religious and 
social custom, made death preferable to a life of widowhood. 
Many women regret deeply that the government so rigidly 
enforced its decrees against this self-immolation, for through 
it they could not only escape present misery, but they could merit 
a blessed future. This latter they lose if they commit suicide. 

General education must ultimately break down much of these 
people's superstitions and conservatism. But the less the inter- 
ference with religious belief be apparent, the quicker will simple 
education really sap the very foundations of their superstitions. 
Mere argument rarely reaches the issue. A shrewd Indian will 



2o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

argue with you, and seems to be certain that he has the best of it. 
He is full of casuistry, and vain of his powers. 

I think I called India the land of dreams. I have reached the 
conclusion that more than half of what has been said and written 
of it was the chimera of dreams. Travellers have indulged in 
fancy when telling of what they have seen, or have taken excep- 
tional conditions, and written of them in such a manner as to 
make the reader suppose they were the rule. Reading their 
books one would think this a land in perennial bloom, that the 
monkey is seen everywhere capering along the roads, and that 
brilliant wild peacocks and other birds make the wayside bright 
and gorgeous. We have travelled over 3,000 miles of Indian 
road, and have not seen a single wild monkey or pea-fowl, and 
while birds of bright plumage are often seen, they have to be 
closely watched to catch their beauty ; one bookmaker who wrote 
beautifully, dilated upon the gorgeous " birds of paradise " seen 
from car windows. I doubt if there was ever one of these birds 
in India, either wild or caged. The same exuberance of fancy 
has even painted this as the land of gems and riches. The 
wealth of Ind has furnished the orator and poet with similes 
from the days of Rome down to the present. Alexander halted 
at the Indus, which we crossed two days ago, because his Greeks 
knew there was more of disease to be met in the hot lands beyond 
than of gold and gems to furnish them plunder. 

India is fearfully poor to-day, and I find internal evidence that 
it has ever been so. There have ever been the few who coined 
gold out of muscle, and crystallized sweat into gems. The few 
here were perhaps smaller than in any other country. They built 
its palaces and tombs of wondrous beauty, but there is absolutely 
no sort of monument of past peoples or masses. These have ever 
lived in squalor, their mud houses melting under summer rains ; 
their little accumulations vanishing in the smoke of their poor 
funeral piles. Oppression has so sunken into their natures that 
they have no conception of any thing else. If eels were half as 
fond of being skinned as these people are of being ground down, 
they would wiggle from their mud-iioles into the frying-pan. 
Like spaniels, these people delight in licking the hand that smites 
them. There has been nothing in this land to make it one of 
wealth, but every thing to make it the opposite. Its climate 
enables its people to live on what would be starvation elsewhere, 
and to clothe themselves in the lightest garments. Such a people 
never are rich. They have been able to manufacture articles at 
almost a nominal cost, whose rarity in Europe makes them of 
great value, and Europe imagined these things were riches, 
whereas their very cheapness here was evidence of the poverty of 
the country. Wealth is accumulation ; and accumulation is the 
offspring of habits arising out of the necessity of saving for the 
morrow. There was never such necessity in India. 



INDIAN POVERTY AND KINDLINESS. 207 

England is trying hard to make its Indian subjects prosperous, 
and to elevate them, but since her first step was taken in the land, 
she has found the nature of the people has a tendency to make 
rulers corrupt. A trial is now going on in Lahore, which shows 
that it is hard even for English civil-service examiners to escape 
the temptation of taking bribes. It would be amusing to read the 
testimony of candidates for a higher grade of lawyers, if it were not 
painful ; amusing because of the simplicity of the people in tak- 
ing it for granted that nothing can be had except for pay, and the 
ease with which they invite themselves into traps. The climate 
seems to have acted on the people as it does upon their wooden 
furniture and doors. If one twists in a chair, he breaks it down. 
If he moves a table he is liable to have it drop in pieces, and I have 
not seen a door in the land that fits as it was made. In the rainy 
season every thing takes water as a sponge, and in the dry months 
it shrinks like a cake of country-made soap. It acts in like man- 
ner upon the moral nature of the flexible people. 

One sees everywhere throughout India one general characteris- 
tic, a sort of kindliness of disposition to man and brute. All 
domestic animals are as gentle and tame as fireside petted kittens. 
The cow and ass, the sheep and goat, the camel and horse, the 
chicken and duck, all seem absolutely a part of the family, 
Pigeons in flocks are frequently seen whirling in great circles in 
the cities for several minutes, and then swooping down upon cer- 
tain house-»tops. Often several flocks unite and fly together and 
then separate as people do in dances. The owners of the different 
flocks are on the tops of their respective houses waving flags and 
directing the flights of the birds, and by a motion calling them 
down to them. I thus one day saw six different flocks flying at 
once — now mingling, then separating, and all done under the 
orders of their respective owners. They are kept in a sort of 
coops on the house-tops, and are thus sent out for exercise. 
After flying for a half hour or so, they are fed and quietly go into 
their coops, and such as are deemed fit for the market are taken 
out. One gets pigeons at almost every meal in all cities here. 
Crows are as tame as sparrows are with us. Indeed, more so. 
I saw one in Calcutta stealthily taking its meal from a quarter of 
beef which a butcher had on his head, and several times have seen 
one steal food from a man's dish when he was eating before his 
door. They come within five or six feet of natives at every rail- 
way station, but eye very suspiciously a foreigner, and can hardly 
be tempted with crumbs nearer than 10 or 15 feet. There are 
vast numbers of them in every part of the land. In Burmah they 
are black ; here they have a mouse-colored neck, and look as if 
they wore a cape. 

A native hurts nothing if he can help it. Ants are the terrible 
pest of the land. The white ant eats up the houses and destroys 
the trees, yet I have seen more than one native carefully step so 



2o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

as not to crush these Httle workers, travelHng from their nest to 
a neighboring tree. The Hindoo, like the Buddhist, believes in 
transmigration of souls. Though Buddhism exists to only a small 
extent at the present time in India proper, yet when it did exist it 
made its teachings take a deep hold upon the Brahminical reli- 
gion, and has left its traces throughout the land, very greatly soft- 
ening the cruel nature of the older and more dominant theology. 

The people from Benares to the north of Delhi are much more 
stalwart and manly than are the Bengalese, but they in their turn 
are greatly inferior to the men of the Punjab. This word means 
and expresses the country lying between the five great branches 
of the Indus. In this country is a magnificent race of men. The 
Sikh soldiers in the army are the handsomest body of men I have 
ever seen, and indeed I have never seen any European or American 
who came any thing like being as perfect model of manly beauty 
as do many officers seen in the native Sikh cavalry. We witnessed 
the practice of a native regiment at company target-shooting near 
Peshawur. The oiificers on horseback were simply superb ; afoot 
all show one universal defect among the entire people of India — 
an almost total absence of calf to the leg. Even in Punjab men 
and women have none. I can say this of the women, because up 
here there are two things quite antipodal to our customs. Men 
wear what seem to be skirts and the women all wear trousers — 
and very tight ones, too, below the knee. The other singular 
thing is, one sees hundreds of men with beards dyed a brilliant 
red. A gray-bearded man is rarely seen from Lahore to Peshawur, 
for they take on a bright vermilion, evidently not for the pur- 
pose of concealing age, but as a sort of beautifien This seems a 
custom borrowed from, or at least common with, the Afghans and 
other people from central Asia. 

The men of Punjab proved themselves brave by giving Eng- 
land harder fighting to subdue them than perhaps all the balance 
of India. But when once they acknowledge the supremacy of their 
new rulers, like brave men they have shown themselves true. 
They have little of the servile demeanor of the Bengalese. They 
look a foreigner in the face — respectfully, but with an apparent 
consciousness of their own dignity. The English here, too, seem 
to meet them more as men and less as slaves than they do the 
more servile people of Bengal. I suspect they cannot do 
otherwise. 

Not only did the people change from those previously seen 
but after leaving Lahore behind us a few hours the face 
of the country became quite different. For about lOO miles 
in width along the Jhelum River, the earth is corrugated by 
strange chasms, fissures, and gorges. The soil is an exceedingly 
friable clay. This is rain-washed into gullies of 50 to 100 feet 
in depth, running in every direction, and presenting a most gro- 
tesque appearance ; great domes, and spires of clay ; walls with 



WESTERN HIM ALA YAS. 209 

flying buttresses, cathedrals, fortresses ; — for miles and miles these 
are seen, as wild and picturesque a landscape as one can imagine. 
This clay is now as red as terra cotta, then of a yellow ochre 
color, then of a brown and a white, at a distance resembling great 
bands of woven stuff in different colors. 

Parallel to the railroad ran often the great trunk road, which, 
starting at Calcutta and ending at Peshawur, I suppose, the 
grandest wagon road in the world — 1,600 miles long, beautifully 
gravelled, everywhere smooth enough for a bicycle, and generally 
having a line row of trees on either side. In the lower countries 
these trees are evergreen oaks or shiny-leafed fruit-trees, or some 
other of that character ; up here it is the bulbul, or gum-arabic tree, 
with its delicate mimosa leaf. We frequently saw long lines of 
camels slowly wending their way, and large caravans of asses and 
cows, showing that the country has much of the characteristics of 
central Asia. 

Peshawur is a very interesting city, wholly central-Asiatic. A 
very large caravan had come in only a day or two ago from Af- 
ghanistan and Turkestan. In the bazaar are bold-looking Afghans, 
with noses so aquiline that one is ready to believe them sprung 
from the lost tribes of Israel, clad in sheep-skin coats, and fierce 
in their demeanor ; Kaiirees, who looked at us as if they re- 
gretted we were not over in the mountains, that they might cut 
our throats and empty our pockets ; Cashmirees, clean and fair- 
skinned, some of them with blue eyes. In the great yard we 
walked among 400 or 500 camels squatted around in circles, their 
heads close together and eating from common centres. We passed 
over 300 of them in a long line wending their way toward the 
frontier, loaded with bales of English goods, great goods boxes, 
and six-inch iron water-pipe fresh from England. I wondered what 
use the pipes were to be put to in central Asia. With this caravan 
was a wild, hardy set of men, and more or less armed. In this 
locality men are permitted to bear arms. Nowhere else in India 
is this allowed — that is, to natives, but here self-protection makes 
it necessary. Indeed, we are no longer in India, except in name. 
We are in central Asia, and only 12 miles from the border of the 
land of one of the fiercest people in the world. 

We had intended stopping at Amballa as we came up, and 
thence making a trip a day long to Simla, the summer vice-regal 
palace or residence. I wished from that point to look upon the 
mighty peaks of the western Himalayas. Years ago. Bayard 
Taylor gave me a glowing picture of them ; I wished to look 
upon them as he did, and thus in fancy renew our old associa- 
tions. He looked upon the eternal snows of Gungo'otree from not 
many miles away from Simla. I wished to do the same, but it 
was pouring down rain, and we were told it was snowing violently 
at Simla. We therefore left it for our return trip, if the weather 
should be more favorable. Not having any guide-book to tell us 



2IO A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

what we were to see on the road to Peshawur, we were most 
agreeably surprised to find that the mighty snow-clad Himalayas 
of Cashmir were visible shortly after leaving Lahore, and con- 
tinued so until night, and here we have had the opportunity of 
looking upon their cold grandeur. Much of the snow seen, how- 
ever, passes away in summer. 

We have now stood near the waters of the Brahmaputra, 
which rises in Thibet, and, flowing easterly, drains the northern 
slope of the Himalayas, the mightiest of mountains, then 
bending around the eastern end, empties into the eastern Bay of 
Bengal. Between Lahore and Peshawur we crossed the Indus, 
which rises close by the fountain of the other great river, and 
running westward under the northern slope of these same moun- 
tains passes around their western end, and empties into the Sea 
of Arabia. Mighty rivers — of what mighty monarchs do they 
wash the feet ? 

When we first looked upon the lofty mountains of Cashmir, 
there was a long line of fleecy clouds hanging over them. 
One of us could not resist the temptation of calling them " the 
veil of Cashmir." At the crossing of the Jhelum we were close to 
the border of the land of bright valleys and brilliant shawls. We 
would have been glad to have visited it, but its road was barri- 
caded with almost impenetrable snows. We have a letter from 
Lord Dufferin bespeaking for us the good offices of all officials 
throughout his empire. Armed with this, upon our arrival here, 
we called upon the deputy-commissioner, and asked a permit to 
go into the Khyber Pass, leading into the land of the Ameer as 
far as possible. The result was that, accompanied by one of his 
native officials, we drove 1 1 miles to the fort at the foot of the 
mountains. Here we found our liverymen had sent a relay of 
horses to carry us part of the way up the pass, where we expected 
to find saddle-horses, also sent from the city early in the morn- 
ing. Accompanied by an escort of eight cavalrymen, splendidly 
mounted, and carrrying lances, we dashed toward and into the 
foothills. On every high point for a few miles a couple of soldiers 
would step from a little stone hut and present arms as we passed 
by at full speed. Sometimes these sentries were lOO or 200 feet 
above us. They made us realize that we were in a neighborhood 
where dread war might at any hour break into wild whoops, and 
where border robbers were more than comfortably plenty. But 
our escort were splendid-looking fellows, and were fully armed. 
We passed a caravan of camels, mules, and cows, all packed and 
accompanied by wild-looking armed men. 

We had not gone two miles upward into the mountain road 
before our carriage-horses balked. We got out and walked. One 
of the soldiers dismounted and offered me his horse, a beautiful 
stallion, full of mettle and horse-sense. I mounted and rode 
ahead with two soldiers, the others coming slowly up with the 



A WILD RIDE INTO KHYBER PASS. 211 

boys till they should reach the next relay. The pass is through 
a wild, desolate, and grand gorge ; bold, rocky, and bleak moun- 
tains lifting far above the road, which is a fine but steep military 
one. My two " Sikhs " were splendid-looking fellows. In about 
an hour, having crossed the summit of the pass, one of them said 
something to the " sahib " (gentleman), which I understood to 
be that I must ride slowly. He dashed forward at full speed (we 
were now on a down grade), leaving the other soldier and myself 
to follow slowly. VVe met men in couples, armed and wild- 
looking. Wilder-looking men and a wilder gorge do not often 
exist anywhere. Several rocky points had small Afghan round- 
houses, with loop-holes for muskets or rifles. I guessed rightly 
that my departing escort had gone forward to see if we would be 
permitted to proceed, for I felt pretty sure from what the com- 
missioner had told me that my permit only took us to the top of 
the pass. The corporal knew this, but the men with me did not, 
and it was not imperatively my duty to tell them. I was going 
as far into Afghanistan as they would accompany me, for I knew 
England was at my back. Presently we saw our advanced guard 
beckoning us from a farroff point. On we dashed. We reached 
a little stone hut against a steep precipice. My men dismounted, 
motioning me to do the same. They brought out of the hut a 
chair, and planting it against the cliff told me to take a seat. 
Hardly had I done so, when there came down a steep hill from a 
sort of fortress high above, a fine-looking fellow, with a dozen 
wild-looking armed retainers. It was the chief of the tribe, the 
head of Ali Musjed. When he approached I grasped the situa- 
tion. He was an independent chief, in whose charge and keeping 
was this part of the pass. I received him with a dignity worthy 
of the 50,000 democratic voters of Chicago. He was very polite, 
but could not speak a word of English, nor could any one of them. 
Yet we talked. I showed him Lord Dufferin's passport, and also 
that with Mr. Bayard's name attached, with the seal of my own 
glorious land. He could read none of them. I picked up a large 
round stone, made a mark upon it, and said, " Peshawur " ; 
another, and said, " Calcutta," giving their relative positions. 
He understood. I then made another, and said, " England," 
*' London." This, too, he comprehended. I turned the stone 
over and drew a big country, and said, " America." I made 
America too large, for he looked at me in a way that plainly told 
me he thought I was lying. I then drew a pretty big chart, and 
pointed to it, and told him that was Ali Musjed, where we 
were, and that he was rajah of it. He grinned. I turned the 
stone around, and with my pencil made a mark the size of a pea, 
and told him that was Chicago, and I was its " rajah." He 
seemed pleased that his territory was bigger than mine, and 
motioned to me to be seated. I wanted him to sit, trying to ex- 
plain that his rajahship on the stone was bigger than mine. 



212 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

But he was my host, and I must have the seat. He invited me 
to his stronghold on the hill to partake of food. I showed him 
my watch, intimating that I was sorry not to have the time, and 
that my companions would be awaiting me. We shook hands, 
he touching his heart, face, and forehead. This is the token of 
highest respect. I suppose my escort had convinced him that I 
was a mighty man. Thus parting with the lord of the territory of 
Ali Musjed, we rode forward, deeper into the great Khyber Pass, 
and well into Afghanistan. 

We reached Ali Musjed, a bold-looking Afghan fortress, and 
as picturesque as can be imagined, perched upon a lofty, rocky 
point overlooking the gorge not 50 feet wide, through which the 
road ran. It was stormed by Roberts' men, and is now dis- 
mantled. By the road under it Avas a stone hut, large enough, I 
thought, for four or five people. A dozen armed cut-throat- 
looking fellows came out of it. They were some of the chief's 
wild devils who convoy caravans through the pass. The chief is 
under the pay of the government, and guarantees safety to all 
peaceful passers who have a right to go through. After a little 
palaver with them, my guard intimated we could go no farther. 
But I rode on, one of them threw his lance lengthways across the 
road and followed. I saw then that an armed English soldier 
could not pass that line. I suppose it "was the end of our last 
chief's jurisdiction. But I made signs I must ride a little farther 
into the narrow gorge. He looked rather perplexed, but followed 
me. On I galloped until the line of AH Musjed was far behind 
me, and I was in a narrow defile as bold, wild, and rugged as any 
Colorado canyon. My escort was some paces behind me, for I was 
splendidly mounted. He called to me. I paused. He rode up 
and pointed to my holsters and his, saying something rather 
apologetic in his own language. I saw he meant we wore English 
arms, even if his lance were behind ; but I was going through that 
defile a little farther if possible. I dashed forward. It was a 
beautiful gallop, almost a wild run, into as wild a pass as the 
wildest of lands could afford. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

INDIA'S VAST PAST— A GLORIOUS MODERN DEED— DELHI AND 
AGRA— EXQUISITE HALLS AND TOMBS— THE TAJ- 
REFLECTIONS. 

Delhi, India, February 4, 1888. 

It is needless to say, I got out of Afghanistan with a whole 
skin. I have, however, been informed that my cavalry capari- 
soned horse, with the holsters at my saddle-bow, might have in- 
vited a warning from an Afghan gun. But as the chief of Ali 
Musjed did not seem offended, I am glad that I made my little 
gallop beyond his jurisdiction, or at-least beyond his safe-conduct. 
I said in northern India there were occasional frosts from Decem- 
ber to February, yet plants which with us are killed by the first 
frosts are throughout the Punjab green and blooming. Peas 
continue in full blossom, but the pods do not fill during the frost 
periods. Roses are in full bloom, etc. By the way, from Benares 
for several hundred miles north is the land of this queen of flowers. 
At Agra I measured one resembling a jaqueminot in the Taj gar- 
den, seven inches in diameter. Our hotel in Delhi had upon the 
table seven flowers-pots with 12 to 15 roses in each, with other 
flowers, and eight small ones with two or three in each. These 
were all renewed every other day ; the whole at a cost of five 
rupees a month, say $1.75. The great clumps of deep purple 
" begum bola " and yellow and coral bignonias, in masses 10 to 
20 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, make the public gardens gor- 
geously brilliant. Outside of natural gardens the whole country 
has a parched appearance as far as grass is concerned. Fields of 
growing crops are green, and nearly all trees, though deciduous, 
are ever green, but at this season not brightly so. 

Our ride of 600 miles from Peshawur back here was even more 
enjoyable than the one going up. We saw by day what we 
passed going by night. It took 43 hours, with abundant time for 
good meal?. The mountains of Cashmir covered with snow, some 
of them 17,000 feet high, were in view for hours. We crossed on 
magnificent bridges the five great branches of the Indus, now 
comparatively small streams. But the great river-beds, a mile or 
so wide, deep sunken with their bars of rounded pebbles, showed 
what mighty torrents they become when the snows of the Hima- 
layas melt. 

213 



214 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

After leaving Umbala the lofty heights of the main Himalayas 
and the immediate foothills were in view for several hours. Their 
lofty, rugged peaks far over the foothills, from 2o,O0O to 25,000 
feet high, with their eternal snows outlined upon the blue sky, 
presented a magnificent spectacle not far inferior to that of 
Kunchinjinga from Darjeeling. We had from the car windows 
what I so much desired, a splendid prospect of those grand 
heights, which my old friend Bayard Taylor travelled so far and 
under such dif^culties to see from Landowr, only a few miles 
from the line we were so comfortably moving along. There were 
no railroads here 34 years ago. He travelled night and day in an 
open cart, and caught only a passing glance, between clouds, of 
these stupendous heights. We had together, a year or two 
before, looked upon and passed over Hermon and Lebanon, 
had encamped in a wild gorge of the Taurus, and had slowly 
climbed the green slopes of frowning Olympus after a long 
journey across Asia Minor. He knew he had my hearty sympa- 
thy. When speaking of this, his only vision of the Himalayan 
monarch, he said : " It was only for a little while, but oh, Har- 
rison, it was worth a lifetime of toil ! " How his brown eyes 
glowed ! He enjoyed nature as only one can who has a heart full 
of sympathy. I watched for hours those far-off frozen monsters 
of silver, enamelled upon the azure sky, and they were all the 
more beautiful because my dead friend had so enjoyed them. At 
least I thought, when looking upon the mighty snows in the dis- 
tance, that they were the same he had seen, and enjoyed them 
accordingly. I now have doubts if either of the two monarchs of 
the western Himalayas are visible from the line of railroad. For 
the time being, however, our sensations were as complete as if we 
were looking upon the rivals of Everest and Kunchinjinga. 

Americans visit countries, cities, and battle-fields in Europe 
sacred to them because their forefathers lived and died there, or 
because they were the cradles of their learning. There the soil is 
dyed in blood in the name of freedom or for religion's cause. In 
Rome they live over a world of history, and see legions of long 
dead heroes marching before them. In Greece they watch genius 
chiselling breathing forms from cold marble, and listen to undying 
song flowing from the lips of the muses. If India had a written 
history as have Rome and Greece, and had as grateful posterity as 
they have, then would millions visit the 20-mile-square in whose 
centre I now sit in Delhi, and would revel in a mighty past, com- 
pared to which the past of Rome and Athens is as a decade to a 
century. Here for thousands of years history has been acted, but 
never written. Acted not centuries ago, with a vast vacuity to 
follow, but acted continuously as the ages have marched slowly 
along. Not 200 yards from where I am writing, 30 years ago a 
deed was done more heroic than was the stand of Leonidas at 
Thermopylae. The murderous mutineers seemed safe behind 



UNIQUE MONUMENTS. OLD RUINS. 215 

Delhi's impregnable wall. A breach must be made, but how, and 
by v/hom ? Two brave soldiers, with nine followers, offered to 
blow up a massive gate. With bags of powder they ran to it un- 
der a galling fire, knowing well that if they escaped the bullets 
they must be buried under the ruins they hoped to make. One 
by one they fell. A single man reached the arch, applied the 
torch, the breach was made, Delhi was won, and the mutiny, 
which was one of the most cruel recorded in the annals of war, 
was virtually ended. A plain slab leaning against the gate gives 
the names of those heroes. A national anthem should carry their 
fame down through undying time. 

Here within a small circuit the mighty moguls ruled 200 years 
ago, and during several centuries made this their capital of a 
mighty empire, the centre of an art all their own, — an art so full 
of fancy and dreamy splendor that even Aladdin's lamp could 
find nothing to surpass its creations. Under the ruins of the 
palaces, mosques, tombs, and forts of the moguls lay the ruins 
of the cities destroyed by them, and out of whose sculptured 
walls and temples they found materials for their own superb 
edifices. Still lower down were the relics of yet older cities, 
layer upon layer in stratified debris, is the work of the enslaved 
millions, who have lived, toiled in misery for thousands of 
years, and died, only to make room for other slaves yet to 
follow. 

Here one sees a red-coated English soldier quartered in the 
colonnaded cloister of an old mosque erected two or three 
centuries ago. Sculptured stones cut by hands of Hindoo 
worshippers over 2,000 years ago are built into the walls of 
the Mohammedan temple. The Brahmin temple, a part of 
whose cloisters became the corridors of the conquering Moham- 
medan, had for its foundations some structures yet far older ; 
at one of these places, piercing through all, stands the most 
unique monument in the world — a wrought-iron pillar nearly a 
foot and a half in diameter, and over 40 feet high — how much 
higher, or rather longer, no one knows, for an excavation nearly 
30 feet deep failed to reach its foundation, and at this depth 
of excavation it was yet so firm below that it could not be 
shaken. This strange pillar is not hollow, but it is a solid shaft 
of malleable iron, and is claimed by the natives to have its 
foundation on the centre of the world. 

Cities lie here in strata, as the ribs of the earth do in its 
mighty rocks — sandstone, shale, limestone, and marble. Can 
we hope that under British rule will overlie all a stratum of rich 
loam, to be yet watered by the sweat of a happy and prosperous 
people, till it waves as a field of grain and blossoms as the rose ? 
Close to the iron pillar stands one of the most interesting and 
beautiful monuments ever seen, the Kutab Minar. This is a 
species of column with a diameter at its base of nearly 50 feet. 



2i6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and rising to a height of 240 odd feet, with a diameter at its 
apex of nine. At one time it continued to a still greater height 
of 20 feet ; the upper part was thrown ofT by an earthquake 
within the present century. It is divided into five stories, gradu- 
ated in perfect symmetry. Each story is surmounted by a bal- 
cony supported by an exquisite bracketed cornice. But, as a 
still further relief, each is divided into what appear to be other 
stories, by broad bands inlaid in white of Arabic extracts from the 
Koran. The column is fluted for most of its height, and built 
of red, buff, and pink sandstone and white marble. For what 
purpose it was built no one knows. It is as beautiful in its form 
and construction as it is unique in its conception. The Kutab 
Minar is 1 1 miles from the present city, — the space between 
being a mass of ruins of older cities. 

We counted from the top of the Kutab Minar over 100 tombs, 
some in ruins, others more or less preserved. One of these is 
that of Humayun, the second of the mogul rulers; the first, 
Baber, was buried where he lived, somewhere in central Asia. 
This, though not near so ornate as those of several of his suc- 
cessors, is to me the most appropriate of all mausoleums. First 
there is a structure of red sandstone considerably over 300 feet 
square and about 30 feet high; on each side are 18 saracenic- 
arched doorways, divided by massive square pillars. The sand- 
stone is relieved by inlaid white marble. Within each of these 
doorways are vaulted chambers containing tombs. This structure is 
really the platform for the true mausoleum or main tomb, which 
is about 170 feet square, with cut-off corners, and probably 
70 feet high. On the four sides are lofty arched doorways 60 
feet in height, inclosing the segments of rounded vaults. On 
either side of these doorways are arched windows. All the 
arches are pointed Oriental. The whole of the main body is of 
red- sandstone, picked in and relieved by beautiful white marble 
inlaid work. Surmounting it is a majestic dome of white marble 
probably 60 feet in diameter. Around this, along the outer 
walls, are small white marble minarets, and at each corner a 
small dome. Under the main dome is a vaulted chamber about 
50 feet across. In this is the cenotaph of the monarch. Under 
each of the smaller domes are vaulted chambers containing tombs 
of his immediate family. The whole stands in a walled inclosure 
of many acres, with noble gateways on three sides. A remarka- 
ble feature of this structure is that there are many masonic em- 
blems inlaid into the walls in black marble. The surroundings 
of the tomb are very desolate, and, as we found, haunted by 
jackals ; fit resting place for one so unfortunate as was this 
monarch in his short reign. 

Near this is a group of remarkable tombs of a different charac- 
ter, being simply spaces inclosed by screens of marble cut into 
open network pattern, of a finish as delicate and beautiful as 



PURE JAHANARA. ,217 

if cut from ivory. One of these is the burial-place of a Moham- 
medan saint ; adjoining it is the mosque in which he officiated 
several hundred years ago. A few poor monks still have charge 
of it and protect the tombs surrounding it. One of these is 
that of Jahanara, who shared the seven years' captivity of her 
father, Shah Jahan. We saw it when here before going to 
Peshawur, but were so much touched with Jahanara's pure devo- 
tion and sublime faith that we visited it again. The light net- 
work screen of snow-white marble in beautiful pattern surround- 
ing her tomb, seemed a fitting inclosure for one whose spirit was 
so pure and whose filial devotion was so true. She is covered 
by a plain block of white alabaster, simple as was her nature. She 
asked that no inscription be upon her tomb. 

" Place naught save one green herb above my head, 
This alone befits the poor and lonely dead." 

To carry out her dying wish the alabaster block is hollowed out 
on top and kept by pious monks always filled with green grass. 
A slab stands near the head of her tomb, inscribed in Arabic : 
"God is the life and the resurrection." The " Taj " made me 
bow at the tomb of Montaz, whose name its wondrous beauty 
for a moment almost sanctified. But Jahanara's loving, gentle 
spirit beautifies the simple stone which covers her dust. Montaz 
was a beautiful, proud woman, whose every caprice was a law 
to her doting husband. Her life was said to have been one of 
cruelty, perhaps not untinged by crime. Her mausoleum is the 
perfection of architectural beauty. Poets look at it and, forget- 
ting the woman's frailties, sing of her as if she were fitted by 
her nature for the tomb in which her ashes rest. She loved and 
brightened the pleasures of her prosperous king. But when that 
same king for long years pined in captivity, poor Jahanara 
shared it with him, and by the sunshine of a daughter's love 
lightened up his hours of gloom. I felt one should tread lightly 
and speak in low and gentle tones when near her resting-place. 

Delhi, like Agra, has a magnificent fort, covering nearly a mile 
square, built of red sandstone, with majestic gateways, and lofty 
crenulated walls. In both cities the forts are on the river bank 
and are grandly imposing in appearance. Within each is a mar- 
vellously beautiful temple, each called the Pearl mosque. Both 
have exquisite palaces and audience-halls. The Diwan-i-Am, 
or " public audience-hall," in Delhi is 180 feet long, 60 feet deep, 
and 25 feet high, supported by three rows each of 16 columns, and 
one row of pilasters upon the rear wall. From the outer columns 
spring Saracenic engrailed arches. The whole makes rather a 
portico than a hall, in western acceptation of the term. The 
structure — roof, ceiling, and all — is massive and dignified, and of 
red sandstone, a fitting place for a mighty monarch to give 
audience to his subjects. In the centre, back against the rear wall. 



2i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

is a white marble throne, about 12 feet square and 10 feet high, 
surmounted by a canopy supported by four corner pillars. The 
throne, canopy, and wall behind are richly carved and covered 
with inlaid ornamentation— flowers, vines, and buds, — all of 
precious marbles, and finely wrought. 

Not far from this is the Diwan-i-Khas, or private audience 
hall, the bath, the pearl mosque, and the zenana or queen's 
apartments. The mosque is a gem of clouded white marble, with 
three beautiful domes and exquisite marble arches, supporting 
marble, vaulted, engrailed ceilings. It was for the sultan and his 
immediate court alone, and could not accommodate over 100 
persons. In fact there were not prayer slabs for that number. It 
will be well here to explain that mosques are never provided with 
or intended to have seats. In fine ones the floors are composed 
of slabs of marble often of different colors, about five feet long by 
about two and a half. On one of these the worshipper kneels 
when praying, and during any services upon these, sometimes 
prayer-rugs are spread for the rich. The small Turkish and 
Persian rugs, seen in the houses of our rich people, were woven 
and many of them possibly once used for this purpose. The 
number of slabs indicate the number of worshippers a mosque will 
accommodate. 

The Diwan-i-Khas is also a portico, 70 feet long, 60 feet wide, 
and 20 high, with 36 massive square white pillars, supporting a 
roof of closely fitted slabs of marble, decorated in gold and colors. 
The lower parts of the pillars and outer walls are richly carved 
and elaborately inlaid. The material used for inlaying all the 
interior of these buildings are blood-stone, lapis lazuli, cornelian, 
jasper, agate, goldstone, and other precious marbles. In the rear 
of the audience-hall is a large alabaster table. On this stood the 
famous peacock throne, the most dazzling and costly thing of the 
kind ever fabricated : a gorgeous work in gold and rarest gems, 
said to have cost somewhere from $20,000,000 to $50,000,000. All 
interior inlaid work, both in this and other buildings, I shall name, 
is in vines and flowers, of a perfection of design and finish equal 
to the tables manufactured in Italy, and owned only by a few 
very rich people. The floors are generally of Florentine mosaic ; 
sometimes, however, they too, are in flowers and vines. Separated 
from this audience hall by a court, is the zenana. This I shall 
not attempt to describe in detail. It is about two thirds as long 
as the audience-hall and is a gem of alabaster, inlaid work and 
frescoing upon white marble. Across its centre runs a screen 
partition of panels of open lattice-work in marble slabs, say 3x5 
feet and 4x5, cut into open works of flowers and vines. Some 
of the marble is cut so finely and delicately as to be nearly as thin 
as knife-blades. One can hardly believe that stone could be cut 
and stand when so delicate. At a little distance it appears to be 
of slabs of ivory. A balcony from this zenana, overlooking the 



MOSQUES AND TOMBS. 219 

plain running down to the river, is entirely of this fine work. A 
charming place for a petted queen to sit and look out without 
herself being seen. 

At the other end of the audience hall, and also separated from 
it by a court, is the bath. Here one gets a true idea of the luxury 
indulged in by these masters of men. There are three vaulted and 
domed apartments about 30 feet square, with corridors between 
and anterooms at the side, with baths for hot and cold and 
fountains for perfumed water. These walls are all inlaid and the 
ceilings frescoed. A long marble rivulet runs from the bath across 
the court, then through a channel under the audience-hall, and on 
to the zenana. The floors of these three structures are inlaid in 
vines, flowers, etc., and of costly, precious marbles. 

The government here, as in other cities, is repairing the finest 
buildings, thereby gaining somewhat the good-will of its native 
subjects. In many buildings the most valuable precious stones 
were picked out by the soldiers years ago. The reparations, as 
near as possible, give the appearance of the original without the 
cost, the precious marbles and gems being supplied by imitations 
in fine cement. 

There are many other buildings, mosques and tombs about 
Delhi which I have not time to name. Only will I add that the 
Jamni mosque is a noble structure — perhaps one of the largest 
and most imposing of its kind in existence. It can accommodate 
2,000 people, under the roof, and 40,000 in the court. In the 
courts are the poorest worshippers and more closely packed than 
in the mosque proper. The front of all are open so that those in 
the courts have the full benefit of all ceremonies. The mosque is 
of red sandstone, with zigzag inlaid white marble, giving it a very 
airy appearance. It must deeply affect the imagination of the 
followers of the prophet. Mosques throughout the world are of 
one general pattern. The dome and minaret constitute the 
imposing features. To my eye it is the fittest design known for 
an edifice in which to worship the one God. If Mohammed had 
only left out the sensuous characteristics of his religion, and in its 
place had inculcated the purity taught by Jesus, what a blessing 
he would have been to the East ! 

Humayun did not reside in the present Delhi, but in a city two 
miles off — all now melted away except the great fort and the 
tombs of a few of the great ones. Not only are the new structures 
here built of the material of older ones, but the very roads are 
macadamized with their debris. The bulk of the inner material of 
all having been brick, causes the roads built from them to have 
frequently a terra-cotta color. By the way, pulverized brick is 
mixed with lime for making mortar. They say it is better than 
sand. 

Humayun's son, the great Akbar, lived at Agra and Futtehpoor- 
Sikri, a city of his own building near-by. There he erected gorgeous 



220 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

palaces at vast expense. But the monarch who bent India beneath 
his rod, and whose simple order was an inexorable law, could not 
dispel malarial fogs from his pet city. Its marble halls were soon 
deserted, its alabaster baths ceased to be cooled by pellucid 
streams. Its palaces and stables remain almost as they were 
erected. For they are too much removed from any highway or 
new town to be quarried into for construction material. Akbar 
was forced to abandon his new-built city, and returned to give 
audience in the Diwan-i-Am, overlooking the broad Jumna in 
Agra's fort. Here, upon a huge slab of black marble, the mighty 
warrior administered justice to cringing slaves crowding the hall 
below. He was a harsh and unbending tyrant, but practised a 
rude justice, — often cruel, never kindly, yet never having the 
tiger-like ferocity of the hot Indian jungle, but rather partaking 
of the character of the wild winds which swept over the steppes 
of his Tartar forefathers. He looked over the broad plain waving 
in fields of green along the river; he looked over the interior of 
the fort, and there, crowding each other like tents in the mogul 
camp, were domes and minarets, palaces and kiosks, zenanas and 
pavilions of open network marble, light and airy as bird-cages, in 
which the dark-eyed beauties of the harem sat and sang and gos- 
siped and chirped the livelong day, like prison birds of gorgeous 
plumage, and like them, too, with throats attuned to no songs of 
real joy. The parrot, in golden feathers, croaks its coarse, discord- 
ant jargon amid crimson flowers and lofty bowers, while all around 
is a torrid prison-house of malarial damps. But the lark pours 
out his soul in delirious joy, while with fluttering wing it beats the 
free, bracing air of a frosted zone. The linnet carols its song of 
love, when hidden among new-born buds, on a bough lately bared 
by wintry blasts. O freedom ! wilt thou ever make thy home 
where frosts never blast ? 

Akbar conquered India, and was buried at Secundra, two miles 
from Agra. His tomb has nothing about it to remind one that 
its tenant is dead. It is rather a mosque-like palace of the living. 
His fame will live for ages. Did the genius of exuberant mogul 
art think of this when it conceived this last home for one of the 
immortals? It is the only one of its kind, and was perhaps, after 
all, a stroke of highest art. One enters a vast garden through a 
noble gate of red sandstone, beautifully inlaid with white marble, 
in scrolls of huge Arabic texts from the Koran and finely propor- 
tioned panels. The gateway building leading to the garden con- 
taining the tomb is lOO and odd feet long by nearly the same 
in height. It is nearly square, and surmounted by four lofty 
minarets in white. Of itself it would be a noble tomb. The great 
arched gate and two recessed windows fill the front fagade. The 
mausoleum consists of five platforms, the first 20 feet high and 
500 feet square. In the centre of each side is a lofty gate through 
which steps mount. On this rises the second platform, 350 feet 



FOUTS AND PALACES. 221 

square. The four sides are supported by some 30 columns. At 
either end of this rise a half-dozen domed white pavilions. The 
third and fourth platforms are over 200 feet square, each sup- 
ported by pillars. Then on top of these is the fifth, which is of 
white marble with domed pavilion at each corner. The upper 
platform or roof is supported by beautifully carved white marble 
pillars, making a rich corrider, within which, enclosed by net- 
patterned marble lattice-work, is a room about 70 feet square. 
This is airy, light, and beautiful. In its centre is the cenotaph of 
the great ruler, inscribed in Arabic quotations from the Koran. 
His ashes lie directly under this, but in a dark vault in the base- 
ment of the structure, with no marble immediately covering them. 
Just at the head of the cenotaph above is a short marble pillar, 
with a sort of cup on its top. In this was kept the "kur-i-nur " — 
the light of the world — the great diamond, now the brightest 
jewel belonging to the crown of England. The entire mausoleum, 
except the top platform, is of red sandstone, lighted up by white 
marble inlaid in graceful forms. The grand arch of the main en- 
trance is illumined by arabesques and flowers in precious marbles, 
as are also the floors and lower panels of the inclosure above con- 
taining the cenotaph. The several stories or platforms sit back 
upon the one below, so that the entire structure artistically di- 
minishes as it rises. The entire structure is from 130 to 160 feet 
high, and is by some thought the grandest of all the mogul 
structures. It is the most dignified, and fittingly enshrines the 
greatest of the line. 

The Agra fort is a noble citadel nearly a mile square. It 
contains many beautiful buildings. One of them, the Pearl 
mosque, is a perfect thing in pure marble, as fresh and clean to- 
day as when erected. It is very beautiful, but to me is too cold, 
lacking too entirely color and tone. Probably in a hotter season 
this would not seem the case. Akbar's son, Jahangir, built his 
palace in the fort. Each emperor seemed to consider it a duty to 
create a new city or to erect new palaces. None of them resided 
in the house of his predecessor. It must be understood, however, 
that these palaces in no way correspond with the vast edifices now 
used for such purposes, with great state halls, numerous private 
saloons, and innumerable sleeping chambers. A mogul's palace 
for himself and main queen, with audience-hall and baths, would 
not cover 200 feet square. They were all rather open, — pillared 
and arched porticos than houses. A simple screen and the king's 
command made privacy complete. A guard of soldiers made im- 
mediate outer walls useless. The great wall of the fort, guarded by 
an innumerable army, kept the open enemy at a distance. A body- 
guard kept off all idle or dangerous intruders. The king's palace 
was like his tent, except that marble and alabaster screens took 
the place of canvas and silk cloth. Curtains of woven gold and 
silk divided off rooms, and no man except the monarch ever 



222 A RACE IV ITU THE SUN. 

invaded the sacred precincts of the zenana or harem. In this 
lived the queen or queens, with their handmaids and servants, all 
female. They ate, prayed, laughed, and sang, and were happy 
when their lord deigned to smile upon them. They were generally 
simply toys for his amusement. Now and then a favored one won 
his heart, and became his idol. On such he lavished untold 
wealth. Was she happy ? 

The Jasmine Pavilion is an exquisite vaulted little kiosk, 
composed entirely of jewelled, enamelled, and lacework marble 
screens. This overlooks the outside of the fort. Close by it sat, 
for seven years. Shah Jahan, when kept a prisoner by his son 
Arungzeb. It was there that the ill-fated monarch had leisure to 
repent his own faithlessness to his father Jahangir. Jahangir's 
tomb is at Lahore. It is a noble structure, and is now being 
repaired and restored by the government. Jahan's years of captiv- 
ity had one consolation, the devotion of his daughter (heretofore 
named) Jahanara, a Mohammedan girl, whose beautiful faith in 
the one true God was as sublime as that of any Christian woman 
around whose brow shines the halo of a saint. 

Shah Jahan was the founder of the present Delhi. He built the 
palaces, baths, and audience-halls which are its beautiful monu- 
ments. His ashes lie by the side of those of his queen, Montaz, 
in the Taj. Aurungzeb's reign was a long one — nearly 50 years ; 
but it may be called a half century of intrigues, murders, poison- 
ings, and imperial disasters, woven in with a lavish splendor un- 
known in any other age and impossible out of India. Here every 
little principality had its own language and its own people. Cohe- 
sion was an impossibility, except the cohesion of slavery and des- 
potism. There were millions who could at any moment have 
broken the cobweb rope which fettered them. The rope cut 
into their quivering flesh. They themselves held their limbs 
together while their wounds festered ; they had not will enough 
to swell the muscles which with their own simple expansion could 
have sundered the fragile cord that bound them. Aurungzeb's 
fears and luxury awakened his Nemesis. The cobwet net, which 
for centuries had lain over India, dropped into pieces. His reign 
was so luxurious that Moore's dream of " Lalla Rookh " was not 
an unreal picture of the reality — a reality of which the Irish bard 
was wholly ignorant. Drawing colors from his own fervid fancy 
he painted a picture he supposed all unreal, but which in fact was 
true to nature. I know not where Aurungzeb was buried. A 
guide at Lahore said the tomb was 12 miles from that city. 
It may be so. I cared too little for the hypocritical brute to 
find out the truth. 

At Agra, Delhi, Amritsin, and Lahore are private native houses, 
surrounded by uncouth and slovenly structures, which show, in 
latticed balconies and in engrailed pointed arches and delicate pil- 
lars, how the strange, wild, and beautiful art of the moguls sank 



TOMBS OF AGRA. 223 

into the native hieart. It was not Hindoo, it could not be mogul, 
so lately burst from its wild, ungenial plains. It sprang from the 
delicate instincts of the careless Hindoo, quickened into life by 
the wild extravagance of the untutored Tartar. No simple word- 
painting by a traveller can enable the reader to be " partakers of 
his happiness " in looking upon such " noteworthy objects as here 
surround him." With a picture he could make you see them. 

I will, however, give a short description of the tombs at Agra, 
and then I shall have done. First, the mausoleum of the treas- 
urer of Jahangir and father of his celebrated wife Nur-Mahal 
— the light of the harem. The main structure stands upon a 
raised platform of red sandstone and is about 70 feet square, with 
octagonal towers half projecting at each corner and lifting two 
stories high, and surmounted by open-domed pavilions. The 
main building is only one story in height, but on its nearly flat 
roof and in its centre stands a pavilion 25 feet square and one 
story high surmounted by a canopied roof. The roof of the main 
building and upper pavilion has a broad eave supported by pretty 
brackets. A pointed arched doorway enters the middle of each 
of the four sides, with window recesses on either side. The entire 
structure is built of pure white marble beautifully sculptured and 
inlaid within and without in Florentine mosaic or in vines and 
flowers. The inlaid ornaments are of pretty marbles, the interior 
being of precious stones and some gems. The windows in the 
recesses of the first story and in the inclosure of the pavilion on 
the top, are of most delicately wrought open lattice in network 
pattern. This structure is in perfect preservation, except that 
many of the gems have been removed and replaced with imitation 
in stucco. While it does not show the highest artistic design, this 
mausoleum is of a finish in detail unequalled by any thing seen in 
India. Viewed from the diminishing end of a glass it looked like 
a perfect card building. By many travellers it is thought the 
most perfect thing left by the mogul empire. This, and all the 
things I have named are of wondrous beauty or of lofty grandeur, 
and will live in memory— but all of these pale and dwindle when 
brought into comparison with the one perfectly beautiful thing, 
not of India alone, but of the world. I almost dread naming it, 
lest you deem me extravagant or call me a follower of fashion. 
For I confess it is the fashion to rave over it. I have myself seen 
travellers visit it, saunter about it for a while, then stop to exam- 
ine some paltry detail, or to watch the flight of gay paroquets, or 
gaze at some curiously dressed native visitor. And then I have 
afterward heard these same people rave about the beauty of the 
thing. It is the fashion to do so. I refer to the " Taj." I had 
read much of this famous structure. I expected much, but had an 
undefined impression that I was to be disappointed — a vague feel- 
ing that my expectations could not be realized. I almost dreaded 
this when approaching it through the great south gateway, itself 



224 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a magnificent building of red sandstone, i lo feet square and 140 
feet high, pierced by a portal 75 feet high at the keystone of its 
pointed arch. This outer structure is so relieved by inlaid white 
marble in arabesques, friezes of vines and flowers, and entabla- 
tures inlaid with quotations from the Koran that it looks light 
and cheerful. The gateway alone would be a grand inausoleum 
for a queen or for the proudest monarch. Between this and the 
tomb is a garden 900 feet square, planted in trees of richest 
foliage. These so hid the mausoleum that I did not see it until 
standing before the great arched portal of the gate. This made a 
framework showing only the tomb proper. At first it looked 
small, for so perfect are its proportions that it seemed quite near, 
and so light and airy as to seem a phantom picture thrown upon 
the azure sky. The picture was so beautiful that I paused for 
some minutes. A man passed along the platform, on which the 
tomb is erected and just in front of the main doorway; he ap- 
peared a mere pigmy, thus showing the distance and proving the 
perfect proportions of the structure. I soon knew there was to 
be no disappointment. The Taj was even more beautiful 
than I had anticipated. As I walked forward through the outer 
gateway the picture widened into full view. As it widened I 
could almost fancy the dome was lowering. Yew and cypress have 
made a broad avenue partially concealing the lower portion of 
the wings and minarets. In the middle of this avenue is a broad 
marble walk, with a long pool of pure water confined between 
marble walls, and a broad fountain bed half-way down. I walked 
slowly along this walk looking at the building before me, dazzling 
and white in the Indian noonday sun, and still it seemed to be 
growing lower. But removing my eyes from it when passing 
around the central fountain this effect disappeared, and as I still 
approached it grew taller, until standing in front of the great plat- 
form on which it was built I realized the grandeur and immensity 
of the whole. Its whole length from minaret to minaret, and the 
height to top of dome, all was fully before me, with its pinnacle 
250 feet above me. The entire structure is of white-veined or 
rather slightly clouded marble ; is square, with the corners cut 
off, and is surmounted by one grand dome, with a smaller one at 
each corner, and four lofty minarets over 130 feet high at the 
corners of the wings. In front and on each side is a wonder- 
ful doorway, 60 odd feet high, being -the segment of a Saracenic 
arched vault. Flanking these doorways are four lofty arched win- 
dow recesses in two rows one above another to the level of the 
arch of the great portal. The whole is inlaid in beautiful figures 
and arabesques in dark marble, thereby relieving the structure of 
too glaring appearance. 

Under the great dome is a noble vaulted room of polished 
white marble, and wainscoting exquisitely carved in vines and 
lotus flowers, and above inlaid in costly marbles. In the centre 



THE TAJ. 225 

of the vaulted room, immediately under the apex of the dome, 
is the cenotaph of Montaz, called Taj Mahal, or " crown of 
the house." It is cut from a great block of snow-white ala- 
baster. A part of it is richly carved, and the whole made very 
beautiful by graceful vines and pretty flowers, composed of lapis 
lazuli, cornelian, topaz, blood-stone, jasper, onyx, moss-agates, 
goldstone, turquoise, and other costly stones, inlaid in tiny bits 
so as to give the blended hues of the flowers. In one small 
flower I counted 30 separate pieces. By the side of Montaz is 
the cenotaph of Shah Jahan, of the same pattern as that of his 
wife. He built this wonderful tomb and buried his wife in it. 
Afterward he was buried by her side. Around the cenotaph is a 
guard or fence six feet high, of open lattice-work in alabaster, of 
most delicate workmanship, representing vines and flowers. In- 
side of this inclosure we sat leaning back against the tomb, and 
John gave an octave of tones, skipping one and then descending 
slowly ; these were echoed with supernatural precision — the 
notes were caught and swelled till they would ring, and then died 
like a far-off sigh. A deep bass note was sent back in terrible 
musical groan, and then would melt into a dying wail. We could 
not give a note in so low a tone that it would not return to us in 
rich volume. We tried them so low that we could scarcely hear 
each other, though not four feet apart, yet they would swell until 
they would fill the chamber and come back to us louder than we 
at first heard them. 

We visited the Taj several times, and each time tried these 
marvellous echoes. An imaginative tourist in his book states 
that he tried the recitation of a celebrated poem with wonderful 
effect. This must have been a long afterthought. The echo 
lasts far too long to make any recitation or any song effective. 
A single musical tone rises and then falls away, taking several 
seconds to die out. We found that a pure round note made a 
greatly more prolonged echo than a harsh one. I had no admira- 
tion for the character of Montaz — she was cruel and crafty ; but 
after listening to these sweet echoes, I almost imagined I had 
heard her spirit in chastened repentance. I arose, brought some 
flowers, and laid them reverently upon her tomb. Art for a mo- 
ment sanctified the woman. 

We visited the Taj again and again — the first time when it 
was blazing under a mid-day sun. We spent several hours walk- 
ing about it, without close inspection, but imbibing its glorious 
beauties. The next day we watched it as the sun sank in the 
west, and gilded it in delicate gold, and then tinted it with rose 
as he dropped below the horizon. Then, as twilight deepened, the 
dark inlaid marbles in cornice, entablature, and spandrels, so 
effective as relief under full daylight, vanished, and the mighty 
structure was one dream of pearly-gray. The twilight became 
yet more deep, and gave a weird effect almost spectral. The 



226 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

light clouds which had obscured the waxing half-moon rolled by, 
and then the pale queen of night bathed the Taj in its silvery 
flood, and shadows of minaret in lofty arched portals and in deep 
window recesses came out. The fleecy clouds chased each other 
across the zenith, now throwing the whole structure into light 
shadow, and then permitting the moon to wash it in frosted 
silver. Then it became what some one has aptly called it — a 
" dream in marble." I wrote, when close by, the impression this 
marvellous structure left upon my mind. The next day, under a 
species of reaction, what I had written seemed extravagant. It 
was over three weeks ago, and now in my calm moments, 
with the whole thing indelibly fixed in my memory, I transcribe 
what I then wrote. 

The Taj ! The beautiful, the marvellously beautiful Taj 
Mahal! The inspiration of "A Midsummer Night's Dream!" 
The offspring of a miraculous marriage of the Muses with the 
Graces! A poem without words! A song without voice ! A 
rhythmic dance without motion ! A zephyr from angels' wings 
moulded and hardened into marble ! A chord from the music of 
the spheres dropped and crystallized into alabaster ! A dream 
of love enshrined in a translucent pearl ! The one work of 
human hands which is perfect! The sublimest of poets sang the 
Odyssey and chanted the Iliad. Who he was no one knows. 
But an admiring world has made him immortal, and calls him 
Homer. The sublimest of architects conceived and built the 
tomb of Montaz. Who he was no one knows. But an admiring 
world will make him immortal by naming him " Builder of the 
Taj." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

REMARKABLE MOUNTAINS— A MODEL NATIVE CITY— MONKEYS 

AND PEACOCKS— OLD AMBER— A RIDE ON AN 

ELEPHANT— CROCODILES. 

Bombay, India, Febrtiaij 12, 1888. 

We came from Delhi to Bombay, 890 miles, via Ulvvah, Jey- 
pore, Ajmere, Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Surat. For the first 50 
miles the road traversed a flat plain, gradually ascending ; then 
it was cut by short ranges of low, barren mountains practically 
treeless, but having a sparse growth of brush or spreading bushes, 
and resembling somewhat the low mountains of our western 
plains. These hills rise abruptly from a perfectly flat surface, 
and are frequently isolated peaks. The plains looked parched 
and dry, except where irrigation made fields of wheat and 
gram look like patches of emerald. Quite a large area, how- 
ever, of what appears to be desolate waste, was grown in wheat 
during the wet season, but now being harvested, the large herds 
of cattle, sheep, and goats constantly seen, have grazed into the 
very soil itself. The grass plains, too, seem to be eaten so close 
that scarcely any vestige of herbage can be seen ; yet thousands 
of cattle were feeding upon them. There is evidently some 
quality in the dried-up grass here which, like the bunch-grass of 
our far West, affords much nourishment for animals. 

After passing Ajmere, some 250 miles from Delhi, we entered 
flat valleys between quite high ranges. All of these mountains 
seem to be metamorphic, of marble and quartz and fissured sand- 
stone. Often the crest of the hills were great ledges of quartz, 
which gleamed in the hot sun and looked as if they were masses 
of ice. The road was ballasted with it, and the plains were cov- 
ered with it in broken bits, which glistened and sparkled like 
thousands of acres of diamonds. I do not exaggerate when I 
say that at one time, for a good many miles, the eye was pained 
by the sparkling of these quartz or micaceous stones. A moun- 
tainous land appeared to our south, broken and picturesque, but 
wanting beauty from the lack of green. In the rainy season, 
when, I am told, vegetation springs forward with marvellous 
rapidity, it must be very fine. We entered these mountains and 
found a most wonderful formation. As far as my glass would 
enable me to see, the hills rising several hundred feet, were a 

227 



2 28 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

mass of granite, here broken, piled up, and there in huge natural 
masses, and all water-worn as if a mighty torrent had tumbled 
over them for countless ages. Deep holes and pockets were 
worn into the solid stone of all sizes, from that of a peck meas- 
ure up to caverns which would shelter a dozen men. Some were 
as round as mortars, others irregular; great masses of rock 
weighing tons were cut nearly in two, and rested as if on stands. 
Masses of i,ooo tons were as smooth as if rubbed down. Masses 
of lOO or more tons' weight were piled one above the other and 
all rounded. I asked a railroad inspector the name of this range. 
He said it was called the water-worn mountain. The base of 
these hills is about 600 feet above the sea, and the peaks are 
from 200 to 500 feet lifted. What mighty torrent thus washed 
these granite hills, and when ? Were they once under the sea 
and afterwards lifted ? 

Ajmere is in the western edge, as Ulwah is in the eastern, of 
Rajputana — an irregular rounded district lying in the centre of 
northwestern India, about 500 miles in diameter, and yet under 
the sway of several rajahs and maharajahs, called independent 
princes, who govern their people, so they think, by divine right, 
but in reality by the will of sovereign England. She has a " Resi- 
dent " in each of the capitals, — a well-paid adviser to each of them, 
but a spy upon their actions. The rajahs tax their subjects, live 
in splendid palaces, have their zenanas filled with many wives, 
keep elephants, and stables filled with hundreds of horses of noble 
breeds, protect the game of their dominions for their own sports, 
let tigers live in their jungles within a few minutes of their cap- 
itals to eat the unwary peasants, because these poor peasants are 
not allowed to keep fire-arms or to shoot game, which depredate 
upon their little fields of wheat ; this these native princes will be 
permitted to do until England wishes an annexation, and then an 
excuse will be found for such annexation, and the aforesaid rajahs 
will be pensioned ofT, and their dominions will become another 
province of her imperial majesty's empire of India. 

The country of Rajputana is considered rather desolate, but 
from what I saw the soil is rich, but can never do its full duty to 
man until a better and more general system of irrigation shall be 
introduced, and trees can be cultivated to superinduce a regular 
and generally diffused rainfall. There are districts in India where 
the rainfall is over 100 inches a year, and yet not far off there are 
other districts which suffer greatly for water. The fields are irri- 
gated in these by water drawn from wells by oxen, lifting it in 
great skin buckets. Fields so irrigated have wheat waving in as 
great beauty as I ever saw, while just over the irrigating ditch 
there are thousands of acres of land which produce scanty crops in 
the hot rainy seasons, but are desolate at this time, which is the 
best for good crops under the burning sun of India. The Rajputs 
are a fine-looking people. They look a European {i. e., a white 



JEYPORE. 229 

man) full in the eye, are polite, but not servile like the Bengalese, 
and have ever been a fighting people. They claim, from the 
highest to the lowest, to be children of the sun. They were a 
constant thorn in the sides of the mogul padishas, and probably 
will not over-freely yield to England now, unless she convinces 
them that her dominion will be better for the masses than is that 
of their present rulers. 

We spent a couple of days in Jeypore, which is said to be the 
handsomest native city in India, and is claimed by its own people, 
and admitted by some travellers, to be the model native state. 
The principality has 6,000 to 8,000 square miles, and 1,200,000 to 
1,400,000 population. -The people are cheerful-looking, but I 
found many begging, a thing which some other travellers say 
does not here exist. It is less, however, than in other parts of 
India where more Europeans go. The city was founded 160 
years ago by the philosopher Prince Jey Singh, because his 
priests told him there was an old Hindoo theory that no city 
should be occupied over a thousand years ; so he quit the old 
and built the new capital a few miles off. He marked the city 
off nearly two miles square, built its walls and its palaces, and 
then induced the people to build after his own designs. The 
streets cross each other at right angles, and are very broad, 
the main ones being 60 feet wide, and one of them in. In 
all other native cities the streets are but tortuous lanes, like 
little paths through an irregular haphazard camp. The houses 
on the four or five broadest streets are to a considerable extent 
of a common design, a sort of mixture of Oriental and Portu- 
guese. On these streets they are from two to five stories high, 
and are of stone, plastered over and tinted a sort of peach-blow 
color. The effect is very striking and pretty. We found much, 
however, to be a pretty sham ; many of the houses seeming of more 
than one story are, in fact, one-story structures, the second and 
upper ones being merely walls, with their pretty cut-stone lattices 
opening upon the tops of the houses in the rear. The town is 
lighted by gas, the only one (native) I have so far seen. At night 
these streets are, at this season, very bright and interesting. 
Their New Year is about to commence, and for a month there is 
a sort of high carnival, bands of young men going about singing, 
and bands of women, in brilliant colors and but partly covering 
their faces, laughing and chattering like magpies. The songs of 
the young men were evidently to amuse the women, for these 
would titter and pass on. Our guide said the songs were of a 
kind we would think not fitted for ladies' ears. By the way, I am 
told that throughout India the wit of theatres and dance-songs is 
very broad, and not by any means chaste. Much cotton is grown: 
in the principality of Jeypore, and there is considerable wealth 
among the natives of the city. The palace is a handsome six- or 
seven-story building, erected on the model of Akbar's tomb, at 



230 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Secundra, each upper story resting on the platform of the next 
under story, and some eight or more feet less in size. A museum 
is now being finished, having the same features, and of great 
architectural beauty, and with much exquisite carving in white 
marble. The portion already finished has many instructive speci- 
mens of mechanical arts and of natural history. 

On the friezes of some inner courts and of the halls are Hindoo 
inscriptions, with English translations, some of which I give as 
specimens of Hindoo maxims, taken from its sacred writings : 

' ' A man obtains a proper rule of action 
By looking on his neighbors as himself." 

" Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads 
Let love through good deeds show." 

" He only does not live in vain 

Who all the means within his reach 
Employs his wealth, his thought, his speech, 
T' advance the good of other men." 

" If I now take this step, what next ensues ? 
Should I forbear, what then must I expect ? 
Thus ere he acts a man should well reflect, 
And weighing both sides, his course should choose." 

" Do naught to others which if done to thee 

Would cause thee pain ; this is the sum of duty." 

" There is no religion higher than truth." 

" To injure none by thovight or word or deed, 
To give to others, to be kind to all — 
This is the constant duty of the good." 

" Whate'er the work a man performs, the most effective aid to its completion — the 
most prolific source of success, is energy without despondency." 

" The little-minded ask : Belongs this man to our family ? ' 
The noble-minded regard the human race as all akin." 

" The wise make failure equal to success." 

'These are some of the shorter ones, the longer ones being fre- 
quently the best, but too long for my note-book. About the 
museum is a public garden of 70 odd acres, beautifully and most 
expensively laid out, with an aviary containing all the birds of 
rich plumage found in India and Malasia. It was a revelation 
of beauty. There is also a very valuable collection of animals. 

One set of cages was very attractive to us. They contained 
ten huge tigers, all caught in pits after proving themselves bad 
:man-eaters. Huge brutes which sprang at us as we passed with such 
'ferocity that they hurt themselves against the iron bars. The tigers 
of our menageries are puppets compared to these fierce monsters. 
A few annas to the keeper obtained for me the privilege of doing 



MONKEYS, PEACOCKS, AND JUNGLES. 231 

a little practice. Looking a fierce fellow steadily in the eye, and 
speaking in a stern but steady voice, I tapped him sharply over 
the head with my rattan cane. He blinked his eyes. I followed 
up the action with a sharper stroke before he had opened his 
eyes, and made him quiet down. I tried another, and actually 
made him lie down on his side and purr like a great cat. I did 
not fail once. The native looked at me admiringly, and asked our 
guide if I was not a keeper of man-eaters. What an amount of 
nerve a brave man has when he knows danger cannot reach him ! 

The Maharajah has established a public library, a school of arts, 
and a school for girls as Avell as boys, and, either of his own will or 
under the advice of the British, has made the city not only a very 
pretty and unique one, but also one which apparently is a blessing 
to his people. He has brought much land under cultivation 
by an increased system of irrigation. But the many bands of 
deer we saw close to the wheat fields proved that his preserved 
game. was more agreeable to him than beneficial to the people's 
crops. 

Along this road to Ahmedabad we saw many troops of monkeys 
of all sizes, from that of a terrier dog up to a large setter — now 
romping over the fields close by the track, or springing from 
branch to branch on the trees, or sitting up on some prominent 
limb wisely watching us as we whizzed by. They are sacred, and 
the natives never hurt them, although they are fearful thieves, 
and make destructive raids upon fields and orchards. We also saw 
large numbers of peacocks — noble birds, with tails and plumage 
of great beauty. They, too, are sacred. A foreigner would be 
mobbed should he shoot one. They are not wild, as travellers' 
books would lead us to suppose. They are simply free and roam 
as they please, but are hardly less tame than the same birds are 
on an American farm. They are rarely seen far away from 
villages and farms. The monkeys and peacocks along this road 
were the only wild ones seen by us since we left Penang. 

We have now been the whole length of India, from Calcutta to 
Peshawur, and back to Bombay, on the other side of the land, and 
except at the foot of the Himalayas, have not seen a single 
forest, or indeed what we would call a wood. Trees there are 
everywhere along the roads, along the hedge-rows, scattered about 
the fields and plains and dotted over the hills and mountains, but 
nothing like what most of us at home have supposed to consti- 
tute an Indian jungle. All uncultivated or waste lands are called 
" jungle." " Out in the jungle " means about the same thing here 
as with us to say "out on the prairie" — that is, on the uninclosed 
lands, whether treed or bare, or in grass. The " mountain 
jungles," where the tiger has his home, and from which he comes 
down to carry off people or domestic animals, have no trees of 
considerable size, but are dotted over with shrubby growth 
resembling haws and thorns, and covered by low scattered bushes 



232 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and rocks. On these no native thinks of going alone at night or 
even by day in some of them. 

Snipe, duck, geese, cranes of many kinds — some of them 
standing four feet high, — several species of starlings, robins, wild 
pigeons, and crows are in vast numbers throughout the land, and 
are very destructive to the growing crops. In many localities 
each field has a watchman to drive them off. Often these watch- 
men are on platforms built on the tops of low trees, the branches 
being trained flat for this purpose. Here he watches at night to 
drive off monkeys and deer, and to be ready for the early bird. 
He is generally armed with a bow or a sling with which he throws 
a pebble, and so dexterous is he that many a bird is killed even 
when loo yards away. 

We visited parts of the palace at Jeypore. The billiard-room 
excited our cupidity. It was carpeted with many tiger, leopard, 
and other beautiful skins, the trophies of the ruler's dexterity in 
the chase. The princely stables have 300 horses, each with his or 
her full pedigree at the tongue's end of the groom. Many of them 
were beautiful animals, but too fat, for they are but rarely used. 
Every horse is not only haltered, but tethered by each foot, so 
that he can move only a little way. Each animal has its special 
groom, who sleeps in a sort of cuddy-hole over the horse's head. 
On our second day, being provided with a permit from his 
highness, we visited Amber, the old city, now deserted. It 
lies a few miles off, high in a rocky gorge or narrow valley. The 
mountains around are crowned by forts and castles on dizzy 
heights, making them very picturesque. Lofty walls climb the 
spurs of the mountains, and the old palace or regal castle sits 
superbly on the crest of a high hill overlooking a beautiful little 
lake of clear water, on the rocky shores of which were several 
crocodiles basking in the hot sun. Our road going to Amber lay 
through a wilderness of kiosk memorials of the past dead. Little 
domes supported by the most delicate pillars and prettily carved. 
Then we came to a lake of stagnant water of perhaps 500 acres, in 
the centre of which is a large and stately old palace now deserted, 
its lower arches dipping into the water and its balconies and 
domes reflected in the placid sheet. This water is dark and un- 
healthy, covered with all sorts of wild fowl, and filled with 
crocodiles. We counted 20 odd of them. Skirting this we reached 
the foot of the gorge leading to the old city. To this point we 
went by carriage. 

Here we found one of the rajah's huge elephants, of which he 
has 80, which was to carry us on over the steep pass. His face 
was oddly painted in Oriental characters. We made our obeisance. 
He soon came down on his haunches, shot his huge legs straight 
behind, while his front legs stretched before him, and on a short 
ladder we mounted the mass of meat. Then, with a motion which 
made Johnny think feelingly of the swell of the Pacific, our 



AMBER. SCORCHING A PRIEST. 233 

mastodon trudged slowly up. When we reached a particularly 
steep place he groaned and grunted and sometimes gave a whistle, 
which plainly told me that he thought a Chicago 200-and-odd 
pounder was more than the law should allow. Along our up-hill 
road gray monkeys with black faces and long tails, ran about the 
trees. Some of them, with their old-folk faces, made me feel like 
saying : " Be good-natured, old fellow; I confess to our kinship." 
After passing the clear little lake I before mentioned, we were 
carried up a very steep road into the court of the old palace, which 
is kept in fair repair, and is yet occasionally used by the rajah for 
a few days at a time. It is a princely old place with a noble 
audience-hall and many rooms exquisitely decorated with carved 
marble and inlaid work, the vaulted ceilings being ornamented 
with a sort of glass or gypsum work. Small pieces of mirror were 
laid on a background, then the whole covered with a plaster 
peculiar to Jeypore, made of lime and ground marble, and bearing 
a polish as hard and fine-grained as pure ivory. The artist then 
cut through this thin pearly plate to the bits of mirror, working 
out beautiful designs in delicate tracings, so that the whole looks 
like ivory flowers and vines drawn over mirrors. The bits of glass 
are convexed, so that they reflect any person below and make him 
look large and multiplies him in infinite numbers. This palace is 
built on the model of the padisha's palaces at Delhi and Agra, and 
served as a key to many things I did not before fully understand. 
For seeing how parts are now used I understood better how the 
old palaces were occupied centuries ago. 

In a temple within the palace inclosure a daily offering of a goat 
is made to the blood-loving goddess Kali. We did not see the 
day's sacrifice, but the blood was yet fresh on the floor, which had 
flowed before our arrival from the neck of the little offering. The 
neck is severed by one blow from the high-priest. I was looking 
at the little goddess, with her necklace of skulls, sitting back in a 
deep shrine, through my opera-glass. I saw the priest suspected 
me of some disrespect to the deity. I gave him the glass. He 
marvelled at the huge size the image assumed. I then turned the 
glass and made him look through the diminishing end. " Wow ! 
wow ! w-o-w ! " was his exclamation of surprise. After making 
our offering I was about to light my cigar in the court with a 
magnifying or sun-glass. I saw his reverence wanted to see the 
thing. I motioned him to hold out his hand. His face wore an 
expression of sweet innocence as the rays of the sun began to 
brighten on the back of his fist, but when they got to a little 
focus and shot a hot spike into his brown skin, he uttered another 
"Wow! wow! o-h, wow! o-h, w-o-\v !" I never saw such merri- 
ment as the other priests and attendants exhibited, and the good 
old chap himself seemed hugely to relish the joke. But I noticed 
that every now and then he looked at the little roasted spot and 
rubbed it with his other hand. He will know a sun-glass hereafter. 



234 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Sitting in the beautiful Diwan-i-Am, or hall of audience, we 
enjoyed a magnificent view far down the narrow valley, the old 
deserted city nestling down beneath the frowning heights, all sur- 
mounted with hpge crenulated walls and strong-looking forts, once 
making the place almost impregnable. Here the ruler even now 
holds audience once a year, sitting in this noble pillared hall with 
its curved arches. We ate a nice lunch, and drank to the health 
of the rajah, wishing that his line may continue to rule his people 
for yet ten successions before the haughty lords of the far-off 
island in the west may demand his country for themselves. He 
claims the sun for his ancestor, to whom he traces his lineage 
through 140 known names, the oldest pedigree of any ruling king, 
compared to which that of Wales, who laid the corner-stone of 
the Jeypore museum three years ago, is that of a plebeian. 

Bidding the good-natured cutter-off of goats' heads good-bye, 
we walked to the foot of the hill, where Jumbo's cousin had pre- 
ceded us, and on bended knees took us upon his broad back for 
our homeward voyage. At the end of the gorge our mahout 
bade us hold on, when the great hulk again came down upon his 
haunches for us to disembark. We placed a token of good-will 
upon his trunk, which he handed to his keeper, and then gave us 
a parting" salaam." I thought I saw a twinkle in his little shrewd 
eye, which said he would not care to climb steep mountains with 
many such denizens of the far-off Porkopolis upon his back. We 
parted with him under the shade of a sacred tree, near 
whose roots was a little fane sheltering a Hindoo god. Behind 
us, but hidden by the hills, was the city of past ages, in the 
distance before us were the walls of the living city with its gay 
people. A huge black-faced monkey looked wisely at us from an 
overhanging bough. A sacred peacock, mounted upon an old 
ruin close by, spread his gorgeous fan of emerald and sapphire. 
The sun blazed down upon our heads, reminding us we were 
among His chosen children. Below us was the stagnant lake, 
with its crocodiles and its thousands of water-fowls and its partly 
sunken palace, once the brilliant summer-house of a monarch. It 
was a weird spot, with a long-dead past. We wished some of 
our far-off friends could have been with us to partake of our 
happiness. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

BEAUTIFUL SARACENIC REMAINS— WOOD-CARVING— PURCHASING , 

SHAWLS— NATIVE DIPLOMACY— BOMBAY— TOWERS OF 

SILENCE— ELEPHANTA— THE 15TH OF FEBRUARY. 

Bombay, India, February 14, 1888. 

Ahmedabad, the principal city of the province of Gujerat, and 
once the capital of the kingdom of that name, was built by the 
conquering shah, Ahmed, who poured his myrmidons over this 
side of India when the fifteenth century was young. There .were 
no natural reasons why a city should be upon this level land, but 
the dark eyes and brown skin of a daughter of the neighborhood 
did what her father's arms could not do, subdued the conqueror. 
In those old days cities were created like a greenbacker's dollar — 
by decree. " Fiat urbs " thundered the sultan, and a city would 
spring upon the teeming Indian soil. So the sultan, with Sipra's 
kiss yet warm upon his lips, said : "A city shall be thy home, 
sweet daughter of the sun," and Ahmedabad grew from the 
materials plundered from two or three other cities near by. Warm 
was the faith of the conquering followers of the prophet. They 
levelled Hindoo temples of idolatry, and decked their new city 
with those jewels of Islamism, the beautiful mosques of marble 
and stone. The ruins or remains of these abound in the place, 
and attest the zeal of the people who built them, and show how 
the nimble fingers of the artisan could cause cold marble and 
rough stone to catch the warm tints of dawn and to assume the 
softness of woven fabric. Many of these ruins are very beautiful. 
They lack the evidences of painful toil and lavish treasure- 
waste shown in careful detail at Agra and Delhi, but evince 
a freer hand with the chisel and a more artistic design. The 
sculptured friezes and brackets of the balconies of the minarets 
and the cornices about tombs and mosques, though weather-worn 
and looking somewhat rough, are very fine. 

In their hatred of idolatry the followers of Mohammed so ab- 
horred its every form that they would not even carve any breathing 
thing about their own places of worship. Vines and trees, shrubs 
and flowers soon weary the eye when they are fixed in marble. 
No art has yet been able to make them wave and bend in the 
breeze. Animals and men have expressions of limb and face, 
which seem to vary as the beholder looks. Not so with any 

235 



236 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

vegetable thing. So Saracenic genius, forced by religion to dis- 
card every representation of a living thing, invented a design 
which never wearies the eye — a design which, fixed in the hardest 
stone, seems ever to vary and to change. The eye cannot hold a 
single detail long enough to become tired of it. It cannot be 
described by language. No word-picturing can make one see it. 
The eye alone can take it in. When a writer, however, says a 
thing is adorned in painted or sculptured " arabesques," everyone 
comprehends that the ornamentation is of that strange mixture of 
vine and twig and Arabic lines, letters, and characters which no 
memory can so carry off as to reproduce with accuracy. Pencil, 
with scale and compass, can make a true copy, yet something is 
always wanting ; the sun alone in photography can give one a true 
image. 

In no place that I have seen is there such a wealth of ruined 
Saracenic art as in Ahmedabad. Yet to the casual traveller it 
offers but little attraction. An artist, however, could walk again 
and again through its tortuous streets and crooked lanes, and be 
delighted by the carvings in wood on cornices and friezes and in 
large brackets and dentals. On many an old tumble-down house 
are seen specimens which our plutocrats would be delighted to 
have on their sideboards or in their libraries. The houses were 
never decorated by the painter's brush. The woodwork is soft- 
ened down by time to a velvety shade ; the delicate design is thus 
all relieved from any taint of the shop, but looks as if it had been 
cut or worn in by nature's own perfect craft. I saw some brackets 
three to four feet long, no longer supporting the balcony or cor- 
nice above, but hanging down and loose> and nearly ready to fall. 
If I had known the language I would have gone to the owner of 
these, and for a reasonable price probably have been permitted to 
carry them away, to be the envy of a home artist. In the rear of 
an old ruined mosque are two blind windows of half circle, cut in- 
to solid stone in veins so artistically as to seem as wavy and soft as a 
spider's web. They have been copied into photos, and appear on 
many a piece of carved cabinet-work now sent from this city to 
the rich in every quarter of the globe. In the show-rooms of a 
manufacturer we saw its imitation in a beautiful cabinet just 
finished for some New York man of money. 

By the way, in every shop we have visited the most costly 
articles were for the American market. In this shop we saw 20 or 
more men at work on friezes and entablatures for a Mr. Forrest, 
of New York. It will be a pleasure, when he sips his wine and 
looks upon his elaborate sideboard of teakwood, to know that 
some of the most exquisite of its rich carvings were done by a 
father and son, the little fellow being only seven years old. How 
his taper little fingers did handle the tiny chisel, and how accurate 
was his eye, when he wrought from the hard, meaningless wood 
a flower that almost had an odor, so soft was its petal! The child 



EXQUISITE CARVING AND WEAVING. 237 

had inherited the talent of his father, as he had done from his 
parent, and so tlirough a long line, perhaps, far back to those peo- 
ple whose handicraft made the rich relics in marble and wood of 
three to four centuries ago. Here children follow the father's 
craft. It is deemed a sort of family disgrace for them to permit 
the profession of their father to die out in their generation. A 
boy steps from his mother's very breast (for children are not 
weaned until four or five years old), into a companionship with 
the father, and a partaker of his toil and a copier of his art. We 
have been in several small carpet-weavers' houses at Amritsir and 
Lahore and other places, and everywhere a large part of the 
weaving was done by little boys. 

Carpets are not woven with a shuttle, but each thread or yarn 
of the wool is put into the warp with deft fingers, the left hand 
opening the one for the right to insert the other. A piece of yarn 
is run through and then cut off with a knife to make the even, 
velvety tuft. The weaver does not have a design before him, but 
in some shops another boy sits in front with the design and calls 
in a sort of chant the next color to be inserted. The weaver re- 
peats this as he runs the color in. The first boy calls out for 
several who are on the other side of the web, and thus dictates for 
them all. To one not understanding the thing, the chant would 
be taken for a sort of religious exercise. In one shop in the Pun- 
jab there was no fixed design at all. There were four weavers on 
a rug of say 10x15 feet. They had a common idea in their heads, 
but each worked out his portion of the carpet simply with a free 
hand as he went. They progress only a few inches a day. The 
manager, to my inquiry as to the cost of these, simply replied : 
" They are very costly. That is what Americans want." It seems 
a general impression throughout the world that our people value 
a thing by the amount of money which is worked into the fabric. 
An American to whom I was showing a charming curio, and which 
I told her had cost me a mere trifle, warned me not to disclose the 
cost at home — that it would not be appreciated unless it was sup- 
posed to cost much money. And there is a general impression 
throughout the East that Americans are all very rich. A native 
will at any time quit an Englishman to ply a Yankee, whom he 
thinks ready game. These people are natural-born diplomates. 

A famous Frenchman said words were invented to conceal 
ideas. Certainly the shrewd Indians rarely permit their words to 
express their thoughts, and a dealer in works of art or objets 
de vertu considers a lie a proper part of his science in trade. He 
lies while he tries and weighs his customer. They catch us at the 
stations, at the hotels, on the streets, and on the thresholds of the 
temples. What they ask is no indication of what they will take. 
After they try us with their price, they invite our offer. We have 
to be guarded or we shall be taken up. A fellow wished to sell 
me a bracelet of silver. His price was 30 rupees. I offered him 



238 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

six. He looked insulted, but soon plied me again. I stuck to six. 
He assured us there were seven rupees of pure silver in the thing, 
and took out a pair of scales. The bauble balanced six and a half 
rupees. He assured us there were 4,000 separate pieces in it, and 
had cost 15 days of labor. We replied: "We do not want it." 
" Yes, but master rich, I poor man ; make proper offer." We offer 
eight. He puts up his pack. We go to our rooms. He follows 
and says: "Take it; I want master's certificate." Every one 
purchasing is asked to state the fact in a little book, and is 
pleaded with until the statement is made that the purchases were 
cheap. 

I looked at cashmere shawls at Manich Chung's in Delhi. It 
was through his house that the now famous Gen. Roberts, then a 
subaltern, made his break upon the streets in which the mutineers 
were carousing, and helped to win the city. I was shown shawls 
with asking price at 400 and 600 rupees. I looked at them, ex- 
amined them with my magnifying glass, Manich all the time 
chattering. He finally said : " Ah, those not for you ; you good 
judge — you expert " ; and he brought out a beautiful thing, a 
dream in wool. " That 's the thing for you ; Americans want the 
best." "How much?" "Two thousand," the reply. "Why, 
what do you take me for? I am no Vanderbilt." " But you 
good judge; you want best; make offer." I offer 800. He 
laughed at me. I said : " All right ; good-by." He followed me 
to the door. We part. He comes down to the carriage. " Ah, 
just come back up my house." The fly walks into the trap. We 
sit down and talk. He plies me with many fabrics. But all the 
time he wants me to take the 2,000 shawl. He wants my certifi- 
cate. He knows it will help him sell. But I reply : " I am not 
buying shawls; I really do not want any." "Yes, you do ; you 
rich ; you rajah of big America city." " Who said that ? " " Man 
at hotel last night told me you are rajah like governor-general." 
He touched my weak spot. I like to be thought rajah of 
Chicago. He then wanted to know if I would like to see some 
Nautch girls dance. I intimated that I had outlived that sort of 
thing. He said : " Oh, no ; you old in head, young in heart ! " 
Again a tender spot was reached. He then regretted that I had 
not come three days sooner. His grandmother had died. The 
funeral was beautiful ! I offered a tear of sympathy. He felt 
my kindness. He said it was sad, but she was ninety years old, 
and they had a splendid time at the funeral. He had shut up 
his shop two days. Had not sold a thing. I said that was most 
bad. He admitted it, but said he had no more grandmothers. I 
wished to know how many wives he had. " Not many," he said, 
but was not specific. I intimated that I would like to see his 
wife. His eyes expressed painful regret, but religion would not 
permit. He gave me a cheroot. I asked him to smoke one. 
He said he could not smoke those — they had been touched by a 



BUYING SHAWLS. A NATIVE WEDDING. 239 

low caste. That is, by me. All this while a handsome young 
Hindoo was standing before us with a beauty of Cashmere grace- 
fully draped over his lithe form. We still talked of Hindoo 
matters, but he managed to round up to the shawl. One man 
had been three j^ears weaving it. To shut him off I said : " Eight 
hundred." With a sigh he said : " Take it, but I lose much rupees 
on it. But all right ; I want Chicago's governor's certificate." 

We have witnessed several marriage processions, but none so 
perfect in details as one at Ahmedabad. It was in a narrow street. 
First came a band of music, three little boys and girls on richly 
caparisoned horses. One of the little ones was not two years old, 
being held on by his father. By the side of each little rider, all 
of whom were gorgeously togged out, were several of their nearest 
of kinsmen. Before each horse was a band of music. Then 
came the groom, about ten years old, all in gold and fine silk, and 
mounted on a superbly gotten-up animal. Then another band 
was followed by a troop of 20 or 30 women, richly clad, and all 
singing. The burden of their song was the hope that the bride 
would be kind and obedient, and that her mother would not 
domineer over the bridegroom. There were a dozen or more 
bands. The drum was the predominating instrument, and of all 
sizes. Such a din and clatter ! There was apparently no attempt 
at any air. The main thing was noise, and it was made. The 
procession was going to the bride's home, where all were enter- 
tained and received presents. Then the bride was taken to the 
groom's home, her lady friends accompanying her and singing. 
The song of the latter was a wish that the groom would be kind 
and would listen to the advice of the mother-in-law. At his 
house presents were again given, this time to the bride's friends. 
The little couple then saw each other, and were required to be 
affectionate. One night she stays with him at his home and then 
returns to her own. They will not see each other again for six or 
more years, when they will be old enough to be really husband and 
wife. This was simply the betrothal marriage, but entailing many 
binding obligations. If he die before they meet again, she will be 
a widow and will be doomed to all the hardships and self-denials 
which make a Hindoo widowhood worse than death. She can 
never marry again, can never wear fine clothes and jewelry, can- 
not eat delicate food, nor sing and dance. If poor she will have 
to become a servant, perhaps a cook, but is forbidden even to 
taste the dishes she prepares. No wonder widows lament the 
prohibition of the " suttee " or widow-burning pyre. He, how- 
ever, may, after their real marriage, take several more wives if he 
wishes. One of the songs of her lady friends bears an invocation 
that he would love her and not take another wife to steal away 
his love from this his first and real bride. 

Here in Bombay I saw a Parsee marriage procession. It was 
very quiet. A European band preceded it and played nicely. 



240 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Then followed some 40 or 50 Parsee men all in white. After 
them, carriers with presents. Following them were nearly as 
many Parsee women dressed in their charming robes of gauze 
and silk. 

At Ahmedabad we visited the splendid Jain temple. The 
Jains are a sort of mixture of Brahmin and Buddhist. They do 
not believe in any Creator ; nature was its own self-creator — a sort 
of pantheistic creed. Charity and good-will to all living things is 
their religious rule of action. They kill nothing and eat no flesh. 
The temple is exceedingly rich in decoration. They were to 
have a grand festival in a few days, and were decorating an image 
in the inner shrine, a sort of deified child of nature. Its face wore 
a most kindly and gentle expression, and evidently was intended 
to be beaming with love. A very intelligent man took us around 
and through the temple, and explained their tenets. When I 
had heard him I said : " Your God, then, is a God of love ? " He 
looked quite horrified, and said : " Oh, no ; we abhor sensualism." 
He had misunderstood me. I explained that I meant by " love " 
that holy feeling which goes out in afifection for all created things. 
"Exactly, exactly; that is exactly our religion." It is quite 
a large sect in India, and embraces many good and learned men. 

The country for some 50 miles from Ahmedabad, and thence 
on to Bombay, is quite heavily wooded, that is, in scattered trees 
about roads, hedges, etc. The main crop is of cotton ; much 
more than half of all the cultivated fields were in this plant. 
Some were just opening in bright yellow blossoms ; others white 
with bursting bolls. 

We stopped a few hours at Surat, once the chief town of 
India, first under the Dutch and then under the English. Before 
the rise of Bombay it had a population of goo,ooo. It then sank 
to less than 100,000. Bombay took away its Arabian and Abys- 
sinian trade. It is now again improving and has 130 odd thou- 
sand. It wears a general air of decay, but its old winding streets 
were interesting. 

Here coolie women do the heaviest kind of work. One deli- 
cate-looking young woman I saw carrying on her head bags with 
four bushels of potatoes in each. At the pier they were unload- 
ing a cargo of coal. Each would walk up a steep bank with a 
bushel of coal poised upon her head. Another gang was discharging 
a load of cobble-stones. They are as straight as arrows, and when 
walking, step with great gracefulness of motion. Their dress, as 
of the same class in Bombay, is of cotton cloth, so caught about 
the legs as to make a sort of trouser, coming half down the 
thighs and fitting like the breeches of our unweaned babies, but 
caught behind instead of in front. The men's trousers of the 
coolie class come below the knee. As everywhere else so far 
visited in India, they have scarcely any calf to the leg. I suppose 
thafe has ever been a characteristic of these people, for the 



COOLIE WOMEN. BOMBAY. 241 

images of the gods in the caves of Elephanta, executed several 
thousand years ago, have the same deficiency. In all old images the 
leg tapers from the thigh to the ankle. The African has a high 
calf and a long shank ; the European a well-developed calf and 
short shank. With these people the shank may be said to run up 
to the knee. The Japanese have calves remarkably developed. 
These people were evidently intended by their Creator to sit 
upon their legs. They did it in Buddha's time. His oldest image 
represents him as sitting, with the soles of his feet turned upward. 
Indians can sleep thus for hours. We had for a day a fat high- 
caste native officer for a fellow-passenger. He had room to lie 
down, but instead of doing so he gathered his legs under him and 
slept for several hours. It is very convenient. If I were a be- 
liever in transmigration I would pray that after my next birth I 
be so trained that I may thus rest myself. When the native 
people come to a stop they squat down as instinctively as does a 
dog. It is amusing to see a crowd enter a station and await a 
train. Everyone at once squats on his haunches and takes his 
ease. It is, too, a great saving of chair legs, and this is a decided 
convenience in this water-saturated atmosphere, where chairs have 
a constant tumble-down habit. I have not used a single one in 
India which did not creek ominously when I sat upon it. 

Bombay is a magnificent city of 800,000 people, and is rapidly 
growing. Somehow or other I had expected to find it otherwise. 
I suppose from reading years ago. The high price of cotton 
during our war gave it a tremendous impetus. It was metamor- 
phosed in a dozen or so years from a rambling town of mean houses 
into a city of palaces. The public buildings already completed, or 
being erected, of light-colored sandstone, of a deep olive-tinted 
trap or porphyry rock, or of dark brick, are magnificent structures, 
comparing favorably with those of any European capital. The 
city is rich, and the Bombay presidency pours its treasures into its 
capital. If it meets with no decided reverses, the next quarter of 
a century will make it one of the handsomest cities in the world. 
It is on an irregularly shaped island, with a pretty little bay look- 
ing toward the ocean, of half-moon shape, inclosed by two long 
narrow strips or necks of land running far out like the horns of a 
new moon ; one of these is low, the other of some 200 or more 
feet in height. This latter is Malabar Hill, on the extreme point 
of which is the governor's residence. It is a commodious, low 
building, surrounded with fine trees, and with the swell of the 
ocean breaking in gentle murmur close by. On the other end of 
this narrow ridge, say a mile off, where it widens into the main 
island, are the Parsees' burying-ground and the famous " Towers 
of Silence." Here the Parsee dead are given to the vultures. 
Between these two points are fine residences of the rich, their 
front windows looking over the city, two miles away, and their 
rear overlooking the broad Arabian Sea. The main harbor of the 



242 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

city is at its rear, on a narrow strait separating the island from 
terra firma. 

Much has been told of the Towers of Silence, and very much 
of exaggeration. One writer speaks of the dismal surroundings 
and death-like silence ; another of the fetid atmosphere ; and still 
another of his having climbed up on the wall and accidentally 
dropping his hat and following it ; and ending with an amusing 
account of his escape from the birds and the watchful eyes of the 
keeper. All pure imagination and pretty writing. The towers 
are five in number, apparently 25 feet in height, and the largest 
from 70 to 100 feet in diameter. Within the outer wall, some 
five or more feet below the top, are three consecutive tiers of slabs, 
sloping and slightly troughed : the outer tier for men, the next for 
women, the inner one for children. Within the whole is a large 
well-like chamber covered by a grating. Leading from the bottom 
of this well are drains into outside wells. The dead, whether high 
or low, rich or poor, approach these solemn precincts on a perfect 
equality. All are borne by mourners afoot, no pageant or evi- 
dences of worldly vanity being displayed. Two men regularly 
employed for the purpose (none others ever enter the tower) bear 
the body through a small opening into the tower. All garments 
and ornaments are then removed. " Naked you came into the 
world, naked you must go out," said Zoroaster. The garments 
covering the corpse are then immediately burned. " Fire cleanses 
from all impurities," said Zoroaster. The bearers then retire, 
and in one hour every vestige of flesh is removed from the bones 
by the mournful birds. The bones are afterward dropped or are 
washed down the grating, and falling below are, under the action of 
the sun and water, and sometimes aided by chemicals, in a year or 
two dissolved into lime, and flow out into the other wells. " The 
earth is a good mother to all, and should not be contaminated by 
the fetid remains of her children." Thus taught Zoroaster. The 
lime which flows into and becomes a part of mother earth does 
not contaminate. 

There can be no noxious odors ; for the dead are brought 
here before decay sets in. There are about 500 vultures hover- 
ing about the locality. The average burials are four to five a 
day, but scanty feed for so many voracious birds. There is 
nothing awful about the premises more than about any ordinary 
graveyard ; but, to the contrary, there is a beautiful garden, 
bright with cheerful and sweet flowers and many trees. No trav- 
eller could climb any of the walls, for they are as smooth as any 
plastered piece of masonry, and there is nothing close to them to 
permit any one to mount upon. No Parsees even, other than 
those employed for the purpose, ever enter the towers. Into 
which tower the dead of any day will enter, is decided by a regu- 
lar committee, and simply on sanitary grounds, so as to enable 
each to take care of its proper proportion. Perched upon the 



TOWERS OF SILENCE. 243 

parapet walls of one of the towers were probably 100 vultures 
mournful and silent. A smaller number were on another tower, 
and a few were soaring aloft. I may be callous, or I may possi- 
bly rapidly adapt myself to my surroundings. From one or 
other of these causes I felt no shock at the thought of the occu- 
pation of the birds ; and the manner of disposing of the dead 
created no feeling of disgust. After all, is not man more a creat- 
ure of habit than of animal instincts ? Nothing proves this more 
than the readiness with which we lay our loved dead in the ground, 
to rot slowly in oozy slime, or to be devoured by nasty worms. 

The Victoria station is a superb building, costing several 
millions ; I know of no railway building at all comparable to it. 
It looks like a splendid palace. The architecture adapted to and 
employed in this climate is admirable for artistic effect. It 
admits of deep shade and shadows. Corridors, deep recesses, but- 
tresses, and balconies which with us shut out the light, here protect 
from the burning sun-rays, and permit those effects of light and 
shade so dear to the architect. He can and does employ all these 
adjuncts, and is building a city truly magnificent. Even the native 
portion of the town, with balconied houses of all heights, from 
two to six stories, and of many tints, and lying between the old 
foreign settlement toward the northern end of the island and the 
new foreign quarter, which occupies the site of the old forts and 
fortifications in the east, is both picturesque and somewhat artis- 
tic. The fortifications, no longer valuable with the new processes 
of naval warfare, have been razed to the ground and noble public 
buildings and private business houses have been reared in their 
place. The native city is densely packed with a seething mass of 
people of many nationalities, all in their repective costumes. 

The caves of Elephanta, on an island back of the city, are inter- 
esting. Great temples are cut in the solid rock, and colossal 
statues of Shiva, the first offspring of the one unknown and un- 
knowable God, the most popular deity of the Hindoos, are carved 
from the natural rock of the high hill, in a cave hewn out, leav- 
ing pillars and columns of the solid stone to support the over- 
hanging mass. Shrines and inner temples are chiselled into the 
hard porphyry. The god in colossal proportions, with his Avorship- 
ping mortals at his feet and his attendant heavenly beings float- 
ing around above his head, are a part of the original rock-built 
hill. Shiva is shown in his dual nature, one side male, the other 
female, even to the minutest feature and ornament. In one niche 
is the creation in accord with the Mosaic idea, borrowed from or 
loaned to the Hebrew law-giver. When God made Adam, " male 
and female created he them." Then, as Mother Eve sprang from 
Adam's side, so Parvati bursts from Shiva, and becomes his wife. 
The god, wearied with the sins of man, his creature, became the 
avenger, and hurls destruction in thunderbolts over the world. 
Then he demands the sacrifice, and receives victims to appease 



244 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

his wrath. In another shrine he has become the redeeming god ; 
and finally he sits in placid peacefulness in the heavens. All of 
these incarnations of the attributes of the Deity are represented 
in huge statutes or in bold alto relievo in the different shrines. 
In the middle of the cave is the main shrine of the great 
creator of man in three awful forms — the " Creator," the " Pre- 
server," and the " Destroyer." Strange similarity between the 
revelations of Moses and the old legends of this land. The He- 
brew says Moses was the leader. These people say he was the 
borrower. May not the truth be that both got the legend from a 
far-off prehistoric people of great civilization, the very thresholds 
whereof we have not yet passed in our boasted enlightenment, — 
a wise and virtuous people, whose homes and cities were con- 
tiguous to Egypt and India, and now deep buried beneath the 
Indian Ocean ? This is a land of dreams. Why may I not 
dream as others have done, and speculate in my dreams ? High 
beyond yon blazing sun lives the mighty primal cause. May 
not I bow my head in adoration of the one unknown and un- 
knowable God ? Unknowable, because utterly incomprehensible 
to human brain, and inconceivable to human thought. All- 
powerful and all-wise. He cannot be other than all good. Am I 
rash when I find myself unable to believe that He fails to hearken 
to the sincere worship of all His creatures, whatever be the form 
of their worship ? I will here say that, according to one of the 
Brahminical ideas, there was from the beginning one unknown 
and unknowable god, who deposited an egg, from which burst by 
his own individual strength Shiva, the known all-powerful God, 
the Creator of the world and of man. He was male and female, 
and answers somewhat to the Mosaic Adam. The idea and 
analogy would have been complete had Adam been deified in the 
record of Moses. 

Lady Reay, wife of the governor, has a successful fancy fair 
now in progress, inaugurated to extend a noble charity founded 
by a warm-hearted Parsee. The Duchess of Connaught, a fine 
specimen of German womanhood, occupies one stall, Lady Reay 
another, and beautiful Parsee ladies others, and so on. Native 
games are exhibited, in which native cavalrymen are the per- 
formers on horseback. Concerts, where ices are sold, and titled 
English ladies are the singers and players. Hindoos and Mo- 
hammedans — with ladies closely veiled, — English women in the 
wretched European costumes, and Parsee ladies in their exqui- 
site robes of gauze and with spirituelle faces- — every kind of 
people crowd the grounds, and are full of enjoyment and anxious 
to purchase, all for sweet charity. The bright wife of the gov- 
ernor kindly recognized me, and after shaking hands, asked me 
what she could sell me. "Your smile, my lady, the memory of 
that I can carry. My coffers are too full for any thing more 
ponderous." "But this is better; my photo for one rupee." 



CONTRASTS IN INDIA. 245 

"Two, if you attach your autograph." It is done, and the lady 
invites me to call at Malabar Hill, as she turns to give a kind word 
to a native in lofty turban. I then ask the Duchess of Con- 
naught if an American can carry home with him her photograph. 
With a winning smile she regrets she had not sun-pictures of 
herself, and 1 pass off, my republican heart full of delight be- 
cause the daughter of a prince and daughter-in-law of an em- 
press had smiled upon me — oh, vanitas vanitatiini ! 

To-day I called upon the Governor's lady. Lord Reay is a 
kind-hearted Dutchman, who, by the accident of a death in a 
far-off line, found himself all at once the owner of a Scotch title. 
He married then a very bright and very rich woman, and fills 
one of the finest positions in the gift of the English crown. It is 
whispered here that the lady really wields the governorship ; a 
slander, of course. With words of regret the lady excuses her- 
self because of her great fatigue at the fair yesterday. A half- 
dozen grand natives in blazing red see me into my carriage close 
by. The road leading from Government House is being repaired, 
and native women with forms as delicate as that of my lady are 
carrying upon their heads huge baskets of stone. I think of the 
fearful fatigue of God's anointed one in the cool palace I had 
left, — fatigue almost insufferable, because she had been on her 
feet two whole hours the day before, and now at noon was trying 
to pass it off on a soft couch. I looked at the poor women carrying 
heavy burdens beneath the blazing sun. I thought of the two 
vast extremes in this land, and uttered the off-repeated ejacula- 
tion : " How long, O Lord ? " A coolie water-carrier came by; 
she was high caste, for none other can handle any thing to be 
eaten or drunk by people of the upper castes. Another woman 
of low caste wished to drink ; the carrier let water run from the 
goat-skin bag into the hands of the thirsty one. Lord Reay him- 
self, could not touch that goat-skin with his lips without contami- 
nating it. Were he-to lay his hands upon the mouth of the bag, 
it would be thrown away. Of such hue is the reign of caste. 
The high-caste English governor would not permit a man not 
socially fit to grace his board. The high-caste, half-naked Hindoo 
woman would consider her rice-bowl contaminated should the 
Empress of all India touch it. 

At a ball at the Yacht Club there were handsome women in 
toilets worthy of Worth. But how awkward and ungraceful com- 
pared to the light, flowing dress of the Parsee beauties the night 
before ! 

The very beautiful " Queen's statue " here is of life-size, seated 
on a rich throne, and surmounted by a canopy of great beauty in 
Gothic style, the whole of white marble. It is a little singular the 
old lady empress cannot sit or stand in marble. It is always the 
young queen. Her rich maturity appears only in photos. She 
was a young lady when she mounted the throne, and she will go 



246 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

down as a young lady into the long future in bronze and stone as 
empress, although she did not become one until nearly 50 years 
after she was anointed queen. After ages will think her possessed 
of perennial youth. 

The sweet chimes on the clock tower close by tell me the first 
hour of morning has come, and tell me this is the 15th day 
of February, the anniversary of the most important event of the 
world to me. Sixty-three years ago I came into this breathing 
life. To the young this seems a long time, yet how quickly has it 
sped ! How poor and meagre its results! I open memory's book 
and sadly turn back its leaves and read its pages. I go a little 
farther back even than memory can carry me, and read a page all 
fresh as if it had been just written and I had known it all myself. 
It was fastened in my brain by a mother's words. It is the picture 
of a virgin forest on the other side of the globe. In the centre of 
the forest tract is a small opening, a Kentucky canebrake of two 
or three acres. On one edge of this opening is an Indian mound 
a few feet high, when and by whom built no one can know. A 
noble tree grew upon its crown, and the roots of a far older one 
were moldering on its side. Here had been a camping-ground of 
red men dead ages ago. I see a field being cleared by belting the 
trees and burning their dead trunks. A one-roomed log-house is 
built upon the lower edge of the brake. There I was unexpectedly 
born. A new-made trough, cut for the coming sugar season, was 
my extemporized cradle. It was a rough house for two young, 
refined, and educated people. But western energy and new-born 
hope filled their hearts. 

Pressed upon this page is another, printed ere the year had 
taken its wintry leaf. The young father lies upon his dying 
couch. His weeping wife holds before him their baby boy. His 
blanching lips try to speak. She bends down to catch his dying 
words. They are a message to his child. 

I turn over a leaf. I see the saddest spot of all seen in my early 
years — the graveyard behind my grandfather's orchard, all silent, 
deeply shaded, and solitary. This picture is the earliest that lives 
in my own memory, graven into the very heart's core. My 
mother is holding me, now three years and three months old, by 
the hand. We stand over a grave. Not a spear of grass nor a 
weed was green upon it. For long years its mould was kept as 
fresh as if it were newly made. Long we stood. Tears were 
running down her pallid cheek ; a dove was cooing mournfully in 
a tree close by ; crickets were chirruping in the warm May noon. 
They seemed to make the very silence more silent. My mother 
knelt upon the edge of the grave and prayed. I remember but one 
sentence : " Thou hast promised to be a father to the fatherless 
and the widow's God." When she arose her eyes were dry though 
her cheek was still wet. S,he pointed to the silent grave and 
said : " Your father lies there, my child ; his last words were for 



A RICH LEGACY. 247 

you : ' Tell our child that an honest man is the noblest work of 
God. Teach him not to tell a lie ' ; and then he died." Oh, 
mother in heaven ! that message has been given to me a thou- 
sand times — in angel whisperings, upon the briny deep, upon 
the mountain's side, in the turmoil of angry strife, in the silent 
watches of the night, in the loving glances of your own dark, 
honest eyes, in the far-off land where was our home and where your 
ashes lie. My father left me lands, but those dying words watered 
by a mother's tears, were a richer legacy than all the lands. They 
have checked erring steps a thousand times, and have taught me 
to hold that " there is no religion higher than truth." 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ACROSS THE DECCAN— KARLI CAVES— BEAUTIFUL WOMEN— HY- 
DERABAD— OLD GOLCONDA— TITANIC ROCKS— ELEPHANT 
RIDE— CHARMING HOSPITALITY. 

Madras, February 24, 1888. 

Old Sol was blazing down as if the very air was a great sun- 
glass, focusing ten times ten thousand burning rays upon our heads, 
when we left our hotel at Bombay to commence the hot journey 
across the Deccan for Madras, and thence by rail through extreme 
southern India to Tuticorin, and over to Colombo, on the Cinna- 
mon isle. We felt some dread of this trip. Every one to whom 
we had mentioned it told us we would suffer at this late period of 
the season, and that the country was too barren of interest to 
repay us for our discomfort. Few tourists make the journey, and 
the few writers who have written of it seemed so anxious to get 
over the great table-lands that their descriptions of the country 
have been meagre and uninstructive — all the greater reason for our 
seeing it. 

The effect of an Indian sun on a white man is simply marvel- 
lous. It seems to strike the very roots of his nerves. A native 
will work or sit for hours with his bare head beneath the scorching 
rays and feel no unpleasant sensation. But if the sun pours down 
upon a white man's head or shoulders, or along the spine, he may 
escape sunstroke, but will feel the ill-effect for days. The atmos- 
phere seems to be for him a convex lens and burns the heat into 
a focus. This, too, is the case all over the land, even as far up as 
in the Punjab, throughout Rajpootana, in Bengal, and down in the 
Deccan ; indeed, it is said that the direct effect of the sun is more 
powerful in the north than in the south. I have discussed the 
matter with men who have been in every quarter of the globe — 
commercial men and English ofBcers, and all assert that they fear 
an Indian sun more than that of any other quarter of the world. 
In China and on the table-lands of central Asia the sun heat is 
intense, and men almost melt and are sunstruck. Here quick sun- 
strokes are not usually the immediate effect of over-exposure, 
though they occur ; — but a pain in the back of the head and about 
the cervical joints, accompanied by depression and perhaps illness, 
follows. Every railway carriage intended for Europeans has its 
bathroom, and a tank in the roof always full of cool water, and on 

248 



BHORE GHAUTS. 249 

the southern roads all have a double roof with an air chamber 
between the two. We wear great pith sun-hats and carry um- 
brellas as regularly as did the " Iron Duke," and when forced to 
go out in the sun take things coolly. We drink no "pegs" and 
are abstemious of " whisky sodas." We are not afraid of the sun, 
but we do not defy him, and I think we '11 go out of India with 
invigorated health. The Europeans here take too many " pegs " 
— i. e. glasses of whisky. They feel depressed and take a peg. 
They continue depressed and take another and another till the 
really beneficial effect of an occasional stimulant is lost. 

The water, as a rule, throughout India is bad. It is taken from 
rivers or from great tanks (artificial reservoirs), which catch and 
hold the rains; these are frequently of many acres in extent; and 
from wells. In every one of these sources of supply the water is 
more or less contaminated. The natives all bathe or pour water 
over themselves a great deal. They wash themselves and their 
clothing in the same tank from which they drink, and their cattle 
and buffalo wallow with the people. A lot of tanks four to six 
feet deep, and containing 10 to 20 acres altogether, furnish water 
for a city of many thousands of people through long months of 
dry weather. The air teems with organic life, especially during 
the rainy season, when the tanks are being filled ; the water thus 
becorhes populous with organisms. Throughout the country 
generally many Europeans boil or filter the water, and some do 
both. The natives do neither, and are yet a healthy people, for 
they have no fear of their water. Faith is a mighty doctor ; 
alarm breeds disease. 

After leaving the islands of Bombay and Salsette, our railroad 
ran for a short distance toward the Satpoora Mountains, which 
extend up to Rajpootana, and is the water-shed between it and 
central India. It then bent southward into the low spurs of the 
Bhore Ghauts. This is a range of several distinctive names, 
but bearing the general appellation of the Western Ghauts, 
running close to the Arabian Sea all the way to Cape Cormorin. 
Ghaut is the Indian word for step. These mountains are the 
steps by which one climbs from the low coast up to the great table- 
land which stretches to the Eastern Ghauts, close to the Bay of 
Bengal. We are soon in narrow valleys, between rocky hills lift- 
ing 1,000 feet up, and having a rather sterile appearance, clothed 
with scattered thorny trees. After running 60 miles we com- 
menced the ascent of the Ghauts, pulled by one and pushed by 
another powerful engine, up grades of a foot in 30. In some 16 
miles we climbed 2,000 feet through grand scenery, lofty ridges 
lifted on each side, or on one, leaving beautiful broad valleys 
with fields and villages on the other. The mountains are all vol- 
canic, showing great precipices of black hard tufa, or trap, hun- 
dreds of feet high, and piled one above the other. Between these 
precipices, of which there are four or five tiers, each a hundred 



25 o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

feet behind the one next below, are steep slopes clothed in dense 
woodland of emerald green. 

The whole had the appearance of forest terraces supported by 
black walls of great height stretching one or two miles or more in 
length, and crowned above by embattled walls. Now we would 
look below into a dark gorge, here 500, then 1,000, and once 1,200 
to 1,500 feet deep, lying between us and the dark embattled walls 
and precipices a short distance away ; then a tunnel or a curve 
would open to us a smiling valley, running off for miles, yellow 
with ripe, or green with growing, crops. Few places present more 
awful and yet sweetly beautiful scenery. At Khamballa, 78 miles 
from Bombay, we stopped for the night and spent an hour 
of declining day in enjoyment of the charming surroundings, 
seated upon the verge of a mighty precipice, and with heights 
cutting the clear blue sky above us ; the deep gorge lying, as it 
grew more sombre in the approach of night, like a monster reptile 
1,200 or 1,500 feet below us; our cheeks were fanned by a deli- 
cious breeze from the sea not many miles away. There was 
nothing to mar our enjoyment. The valley gorge was wild and 
savage. In its woods and among its titanic rocks was the lair of 
the tiger, from which the stealthy brute creeps out at night in 
quest of native food, and lacks not so much love for the European 
that he will eschew him as meat. Kites and eagles are sailing 
about the rocks above us. In the distance, far down the gorge, 
a railway train was creeping up with what seemed snail-like pace. 
Its whistle mingled with the eagle's scream ; crows, the intimate 
if not the friend of man hereabouts, were cawing near by; some 
sheep, all black as crows, were being driven homeward by their 
shepherd. We sat and drank in the scene till one of us noticed 
a worn little hole under a rock near our feet ; a cobra may have 
made it his path. We left the beautiful scene. We were amused 
by a shepherd holding a ewe while he made the lamb of another 
draw borrowed nourishment. A nanny-goat kicked angrily when 
finding a kid in sheep's clothing stealing her own darling's supper. 

The next morning early we drove to the Karli caves, six miles 
away. These are quite different from those at Elephanta, and 
are in much better preservation. In the hard trap-rock a temple 
150 feet deep, 30 to 50 wide, and more than half as high, was cut 
long ages ago. Its roof is arched, and is more like the nave of a 
Christian church than a Hindoo temple. On either side is a long 
row of columns, a part of the original rock, with capitals orna- 
mented with images in the fixed stone of the gods and their 
wives, for each has three, and in front are great elephants carved 
from the rock. In the hill-sides to the right and left are many 
cave chambers, the homes of the priesthood of the past. To 
reach the caves we had to cross afoot over a plain of rough 
ground, with tufa masses protruding and covered with little peb- 
bles of coarse cornelian, jasper, and agate. It was from spots 



HINDOO BEAUTY. 251 

like these the stones came which made the inlaid beauties of the 
tombs and palaces of the moguls. We picked up some quite 
pretty enough for seal rings. 

After tiffin (lunch) we were again speeding toward the south- 
east through plains, brown generally, but now and then green 
with wheat-fields. The most of the fields, however, were ripe, 
and some already harvested. The grain was light, and, with us, 
would scarcely repay the reaper. Low ridges of bare mountains 
were always in view, but not enough to take away the general 
characteristics of plane land. Large flocks of black sheep and 
goats were constantly in sight, but few flocks could boast a white 
one. Cattle were abundant. In two hours we reached Poonah, 
the old capital of the Mahrattas, and still the principal English 
station of that quarter of the country. It is a fine town, and 
gave to us a revelation. We had not often enjoyed seeing ex- 
quisite female Hindoo beauty. Some ladies were having a pic- 
nic in the public garden. Their bourkas, or light shawls, were 
thrown off, showing their faces in full. I think they fully appre- 
ciated our admiration, for they did not cover when we sat on a 
bench close by to read our guide-book, but rather turned towards 
us, either to show us their jewels or their faces. It is not often 
one sees uncovered Hindoo ladies. These were evidently of opu- 
lent houses. Never had I seen a purer type of face or more 
aristocratic features. All were pretty, three very beautiful, and 
one of a perfection of style which began to make me unhappy. 
A wonderfully beautiful woman always makes me feel thus. I do 
not know why. I see a beautiful horse : I do riot wish to ride or 
drive it. I see a splendid house : I do not wish to possess it or 
live in it. I see sparkling gems : I never wish to wear them. I 
do sincerely enjoy a prosperous man's happiness. I do not envy 
a man his beautiful wife. But I cannot realize that any man is 
good enough to be the possessor of a perfectly beautiful woman. 
She is something which instinctively I feel should be beyond the 
reach of any man, and yet she is not ; very probably she is not 
beyond the reach of a very poor stick of a man. She may be 
beautiful, but is always fool enough to give herself to a miserable 
piece of masculine clay ; whereas she is something to me so per- 
fect that she should be enshrined in her own individuality. I do 
not want her, but I do not want any one else to have her. Thus 
I was beginning to feel when looking on this piece of dusky per- 
fection. There was growing about my heartstrings a sort of 
contraction — a sort of paralysis. One of the little girls of the 
party ran off a little distance. My beauty called to her. She did 
not at once obey. The call became an angry screech. Presto ! 
The spell was broken. Thank heaven ! There was always some- 
thing to break such spells. What beautiful things would many 
women be if they would only be silent ! The canary's throat is 
never given to the bird of paradise. One should generally stuff 



252 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

one's ears when one looks upon this kind of perfection, and should 
listen blindfolded to a divine singer. 

We lost 200 miles of country passing it at night. Indian rail- 
roads always do most of their train-running at night. They thus 
avoid the burning heat of day. But the night was clear, and till 
late the moon enabled us to comprehend the country we were 
traversing. The next morning showed us great stretches of doura 
fields. As far as the eye could reach this seemed the prevailing 
winter crop. Hundreds of thousands of acres. The surface of 
the land was slightly undulating. The doura — a kind of millet — 
was from four to eight feet high The fields looked as our prairies 
of Indian corn would if cut off just above the ears, except there 
was not quite the stiffness. Imagine thousands of acres of corn 
with rather small ears stuck where the tassels grow. The heads 
are too compact to resemble broom corn or sorghum. In fields 
where the growth was short there was, every three or more rows, 
a row of saffron or of dahl. The Indian farmer delights to have 
two kinds of crops growing together. He is so poor that a failure 
would bring starvation. He plants two things on the same field ; 
if one fails he may save the other. Fields of saffron just being 
harvested looked like plains of old gold. 

At Wadi, and for some miles before, we were in the dominions 
of the Nizam of Hyderabad ; I thought the evidences of pros- 
perity were greater than in the English governed states. The 
Nizam is one of the many princes who yet govern one third of 
India. His dominions comprise 80,000 square miles, with a popu-j 
lation of 12,000,000 or 13,000,000. He owns the railroads and 
runs things as he pleases, provided always he pleases the Eng- 
lish government at the same time. The crops in his state were 
much better than those beyond the lines. The houses were no 
longer of mud, but of stone — this, however, because it is cheaper. 
There is a wonderful building stone along the railroad in layers 
so smooth that it has not to be hammered to make first-class 
ashler work. The houses, or huts, are built of this laid loose, and 
often covered with thin flags. We saw many picturesque-looking 
villages, many walled in, and all with round towers 40 or 50 feet 
in diameter, and two to three stories in height. These were once 
necessary when wars among neighboring states were so frequent ; 
now useless, for England surrounds the land and there can be no 
more such wars. 

Before reaching the capital, which is reached by a road at right 
angles to the main road to Madras, we passed through some wild 
jungle, a part of it in low forest, where tigers and panthers 
abound. The country became broken into low granite hills. The 
soil being disintegrated granite or of syenite, generally gray but 
occasionally red, about Hyderabad ; the granite hills have been 
worn down through past ages, leaving huge masses 100 feet high, 
smooth and blackened by time, great heaps of rock piled one upon 



NATIVE HOSPITALITY. 253 

another in monster heaps. Huge rocks weighing from 10 to 100 
tons were heaped upon each other, often so loosely that they 
looked as if a child could make them tumble over. Here they 
looked like castles and embattled walls of loose stone ; there they 
were thrown in wild confusion. Sometimes a stone three or four 
times as large as a railroad carriage would be poised high up upon 
a slender base. Some of the hills composed of such stones were 
200 or more feet high. When the Creator finished building the 
world he dropped the debris here. These hills form a cordon 
about the city, which has a population of 400,000. 

We went to the travellers' bungalow, where we could get but one 
room and one bed, the others being full. Two of us had to sleep 
upon the hard stone floor. We went at once to the British Resi- 
dent for a permit to visit the fort at the old ruins of Golconda. 
He was out of town, so was his deputy. The assistant deputy 
was not at home. By the way, here, as at Jeypore, the Resident 
lives in a very palace. I determined to go directly to the Ni- 
zam's (king's) palace, and try the strength of my American citi- 
zenship. We drove up, with no other guide than our coachman, 
who spoke a dozen or so words of English. Our very inability 
to communicate with the guards enabled our cards and Mr. Bay- 
ard's letter to get through the palace gates. They did not know 
how to tell us to go away in English, and we would not under- 
stand their assertions in Hindoostanee that we could not get in. 
We found ourselves before a sort of open portico, the ofifice of 
some dignitary, inside the outer wall but just outside the inner 
palace gate. Our cards went in. Presently an elegant official 
came from the palace gate, surrounded by subalterns and soldiers ; 
as he passed he looked at me inquiringly. I said : " You speak 
English?" He said he did, and asked us to enter, and after get- 
ting through some pressing business turned to me. We got into 
conversation, and took tea. The result was not only did we get 
a permit for Golconda, but a captain was ordered to accompany 
us on horseback to the Char-Mahal, the palace of the " four 
houses," and to show us through. And, furthermore, we were 
most cordially invited to be his guests during our stay in Hydera- 
bad. On my hesitating, Mirza Mohammed Afsur Jung said: 
"You are not comfortable at the bungalow, and I mean it when 
I say I really wish you to be my guests. It will be as agreeable 
to me as it will be comfortable to you." The invitation so gra- 
ciously given was accepted. 

Accompanied by Capt. Abdular mounted on a superb Arab, 
we went to the beautiful palace of the " four houses," and were 
shown the splendid rooms, the state carriages and stables, with 
some superb horses. We then drove to old Golconda, six miles 
off. This was once a great city and the capital of the Deccan. 
Its name has been the synonym for boundless treasures of gold, 
and diamonds in countless numbers. It is the land where Arabian 



254 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

fancy revelled in gorgeous imaginings, and the scene where a part 
of the " Thousand and One Nights " was laid. It was from the 
crests of these huge mountains of granite boulders that Sindbad 
the Sailor looked down into the valley whose floor was a mass of 
shining diamonds, and from which he was borne away on the 
wing of the monster roc. The jungle around has been for count- 
less ages the home of monster tigers. Cities have been for thou- 
sands of years nestled among these savage scenes, and their mon- 
archs have been possessed of diamonds beyond count. Here the 
Koh-i-noor was found. The tale of " Sindbad," I suspect, was an 
allegory, " the Valley of Jewels " meaning a city into which for- 
eigners were not permitted to enter. Sindbad got in, and having 
acquired some wealth, was spirited away to a distant quarter. 

The old fort at Golconda was once an impregnable fortress 
built upon and on the sides of a hill 400 feet high, the great stones 
heaped up by nature being the strongest parts of its walls. The 
sun was blazing down when we climbed it, but the breeze on its 
top, under the shade of an ancient pleasure-house, was delicious. 
The scene around was unique. The great hills of mighty loose 
stones piled about, some crowned by fortresses and palaces, and 
others desolate and bleak. The dusty plains stretched around, 
with some dozen or more tanks shining in the noonday sun, and 
the young rice-fields in the low places below the tanks as green 
as emeralds ; the mosques and minarets of the capital in the dis- 
tance, and the English cantonment of Secunderabad embowered 
in trees ; the old walls in strong battlements climbing from the 
plain below to the heights we were sitting upon ; and the stately 
tombs of the kings whose line had been extinct for a couple of 
centuries, but still kept in good repair, and surrounded with gar- 
dens of mango and palms, just outside of the old city walls; and 
around all the titanic walls of monster rocks piled into low moun- 
tains. These made a picture nowhere else seen in India, and no- 
where else surpassed in weird and romantic effect. 

We got back to the capital in time for tiffin at 2:3c. We were 
just getting through with it, when an elegant drag with outriders, 
drove up to take us to the residence of a Mirza Mohammed, Ali 
Beg Badupur, Afsur-Jung, aid to his highness the nizam of Hy- 
derabad. We were received by the nawab with great courtesy 
in one of the prettiest of drawing-rooms ; nothing flashy or 
tawdry, but every thing in exquisite taste — a mingling of Orien- 
talism and Western elegance. Our rooms were comfortable, with 
desks covered with bric-a-brac and provided with stationery and 
some books. Before we had washed, iced whiskey and soda was 
brought to us, and shortly after we were mounted in a fine drag 
drawn by four elegant horses driven by the nawab himself, who is 
a fine whip, along the pretty road which skirts the great tank or 
artificial lake. Our dirmer was finely served with wine and several 
delicious Persian dishes, the nawab and a couple of his friends in- 



AN ELEPHANT RIDE. 255 

vited to dine with us not taking wine, for we were in a Moham- 
medan city, and our host was a follower of Islam. The people of 
this kingdom speak four native languages, but the language of the 
court is Persian and Persian style is the form. The Persian 
sweetmeats served at this and successive meals were simply 
perfect. 

The next day we had several nawabs (noblemen) to breakfast 
with us, all polished gentlemen. One had been of the suite sent 
to the queen's jubilee last year. At four in the afternoon Ave 
were driven to the palace and presented to the nizam's private 
secretary, Col. Marshall. Queer, is it not, that the confidential 
secretary of this independent prince should belong to the English 
army ? We would probably have been presented to the Nizam 
himself but for the fact that he had just lost one of his children 
and is " in zenana " — i. e., locked up in the women's quarter for a 
moon. This is a part of the religious custom of Islamism. 

Then we were mounted upon a huge elephant and ridden 
through the city. From the vantage-ground of his lofty back we 
had a splendid panorama of the great crowds of people of several 
nationalities on the streets and in their many brilliant costumes. 
Our huge beast picked his way quietly among the pedestrians, 
now and then blowing a loud whistle — for what reason I could not 
divine, unless it was simply because he could. There were two 
wedding processions on the streets we traversed — one of a nawab, 
with at least 100 mounted soldiers. I was much surprised that the 
horses of some of these took fright at our leviathan, and cavorted 
at a fearful rate. His elephantship paid no attention whatever to 
them and never for a moment paused although the horses were 
tumbling about the narrow street. The city is a pretty one and has 
many fine residences and quite nice-looking private houses. From 
our elevated position we could look into their second stories. 
Within there was nothing that looked inviting and the window- 
sills were dirty and squalid. After being shown the private 
armory of the nizam — his splendid collection of tiger, elephant, 
and small-game guns, — we parted with our charming host. He 
was on duty for the night. He sent a gentleman home with us to 
entertain us at dinner and to see us off that evening. 

Afsur Jung, our host, is said to be the most powerful noble 
of the land. He is the favorite friend of the nizam and his 
companion in his sports and in his hunts. He is the real com- 
mander of the army, though nominally only at the head of the 
regiment of the body-guard ; is said to be a fine shot — his parlor 
floor is covered with the tiger-skins of his own shooting. One of 
his exploits in that line is much spoken of as being an act of 
wonderful daring. He is a fine horseman, skilled polo-player, and 
speaks several languages fluently, and withal is a man of courtly 
manners. It was a singular thing to go about his beautiful house, 
furnished with such pure taste, and to see such evidences of a 



256 A RACE WITH THE SUM. 

high refinement, then to dine at his table both when he was there 
and when he was away, knowing that his wife — he has but one — was 
separated from us only by a wall, and not only never seeing her, 
but even learning that she probably has been into the front part 
of the residence but a few times. Her taste had nothing to do 
with its embellishment, but his alone, and she never enjoys its 
pleasures. Afsur Jung has about him a retinue of servants, not 
one of whom has ever seen his wife's unveiled face. He is himself 
very liberal and I doubt not would be glad to be freed from such 
restraints, but they are a part of his religion as well as a part of 
the customs of his country. When we parted I think he really 
regretted our leaving so soon. He invited us to come back in the 
tiger-shooting season, when he would give us the best guns and 
the best elephants in the dominions. 

From Hyderabad more than half of the journey onward we 
made by daylight. The same characteristics were seen which be- 
longed to the country traversed in reaching Wadi, except that 
there was a large growth of cotton. The plant was very low, 
frequently not reaching six inches. The farm people became yet 
blacker, the majority being almost as dark as negroes. They are 
a much finer race than those of either Bengal or the neighborhood 
of Bombay. Their features are finely cut, delicate and oftentimes 
very handsome. Many are quite tall and better proportioned in 
the lower limbs than in northern India. Many a man nearly as 
black as a crow is seen whose features would compare favorably 
with the best-visaged European, and women are often very 
pretty. If our beauties could only see their feet they would envy 
them. When shoes were introduced one of the handsomest parts 
of the human frame became deformed. The nizam's people are 
entirely wanting in the servile demeanor of the Bengalese. We 
crossed several rivers broad and capable of carrying vast streams, 
but now only with small ones coursing along their rocky beds. All 
the streams south of Bombay rise in the Ghauts close to the west 
coast and flow eastward into the Bay of Bengal. The granite hills 
seen about Hyderabad extend far south and cross the railroad at 
greater altitudes. They make the trip decidedly picturesque. A 
hundred and odd miles from Madras we passed through fine bare 
mountain scenery, and saw some old fortified cities and fortresses 
perched high upon lofty hills, as bold and picturesque as any 
thing on the Rhine or Danube. 

Arriving at Madras we found every hotel filled. We even 
tried several whose filthy appearance repelled us — dirty dens 
kept by Portuguese who are ignorant of the fact that cleanliness 
is next to godliness. A native had fastened himself upon us at 
the station, determined to be our guide and servant. When we 
were about to return to the station to go off on the next train, 
he said he thought he could get us a room at the " Bidden 
Home " on the beach. This turned out to be a charitable home 



NATIVE CHRISTIANITY. 257 

for seamen, now rarely used since the conamerce by sea of the 
place has so fallen off. Few sailing vessels touch here. The 
harbor is open, and permits no sail craft to lie safely before the 
city, and the steamers stay so short a time that a sailors' home is 
hardly needed. Thinking our stay under the circumstances 
would be very short, we at once ordered a carriage and drove about 
the city. We found it as hot as we had been told it would be. Its 
public buildings are quite fine, and Fort George is a grand military 
establishment. The esplanade and military grounds for drilling- 
are large, with handsome shaded drives crossing them in different 
directions. An outer harbor now being erected may, when 
finished, bring back to Madras some of her lost commerce. 

Hot and dusty we returned to our refuge, and, to our delight, 
found we had won victory from defeat. A delightful breeze, a 
sort of undertow, was coming in from the sea, so invigorating 
that we determined to stop here for a rest,- instead of going to 
the Nilgherri hills, where we had expected to spend two or three 
days. Muni Sami, the butler of the establishment, gets us 
delightful meals, and is making our stay really charming. I asked 
him if he were a Christian. There are a great many native Chris- 
tians in this locality. He said no ; " that Christians got drunk too 
much ; that it was the best religion to die in, but it was better to 
be a heathen until one got old ; he intended turning Christian 
before he died." I am sorry to say that our limited experience, 
so far, corroborates this statement. At Lahore and Jeypore we 
had native Christians for guides, and both took more stimulants 
than was healthy. The fellow who attached himself to us here 
was not able to bear prosperity. Our pay overcame him, and 
yesterday I discharged him for being drunk. We have now been 
here three days, and find the early mornings and cool afternoons 
profitably employed driving through the large city, which has a 
population of 350,000. But it is only at the Bidden Home that 
we find the freshness of the undertow sea-breeze, I suppose, be- 
cause of its immediate proximity to the surf, which breaks not 
100 feet from my bedroom. We spend all the heat of the day 
lying in easy chairs in our colonnaded second story, drinking in 
enjoyment and sea air. We have been much on the sea during 
the past seven months, but we were then the sport of the waves. 
Here we have sea-baths, and watch the snowy surf without any 
of the discomforts of too great intimacy with the monster ocean. 
We would like to enjoy the glorious surf, but dare not, for 
ground-sharks abound here, and are fond of Europeans. Two 
English soldiers went into the surf not long since ; they were 
attacked, and although assistance was close at hand, yet the poor 
fellows were never seen again. The deeply-dyed sea told ho-w 
sharp were the fishes' teeth. I shall always remember the Bid- 
den Home with pleasure, and bless its charitable founder. We 
arrived on the 22d. We spent the afternoon watching, tlie surf 



258 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

breaking almost under our feet. Natives were fishing a little 
way out on tiny catamarans, which are simply a couple of 
sticks of timber from 15 to 30 feet long, turned up at one end 
like sled-runners, and lashed together with thongs. It furnishes 
a keel two or three feet wide; on this a couple of fishermen will 
boldly enter the surf which no other boat would attempt. Stand- 
ing erect upon the tiny craft, with a light paddle, they will ride 
over or through a crest which looks as if it would surely swallow 
them up. They pass over it like a duck or through it as a fish, 
their black bodies shining in the sun and resembling animate 
polished ebony. The breeze was not fresh enough to raise any 
white caps, but a fine ground-swell was coming in from two to 
five or six feet high. In solemn order the waves would round 
up and break below us, making now a gentle murmur and then a 
deep-toned thud. After a loud crash the aeolia of the sea would 
roll awav, dying in a wail or sinking into a sigh ; now in the wild 
shriek of a madman, and then in a murmer as soft as a mother's 
blessing. 

Washington's birthday I watched the waves marching in order 
one after the other, the free soldiers of the sea, and thought of 
the day and of the man of whose birth it was the anniversary. He 
was born and lived that a mighty people might be free. I was 
now in a land whose civilization dates from thousands of years 
ago, and yet there is no tradition that freedom here for one day 
even has ever had a home. There is no tradition that any man 
living among the countless millions of this land ever knew what 
freedom was. There has always been the master and the minion. 
The master might be one man, or he might be many, but the 
mighty mass has been a mass of willing slaves. There have been 
fierce wars to free one nation from another nation, or a prince 
from another prince, but not a single struggle to free man. 
Washington's name is a very synonym for freedom. Will the 
people whom he fought for always be firm to the principles he 
taught, or will madness of party some day cause them to for- 
get his lessons, and make them bow to a people's idol, and all 
too readily permit his foot to rest upon their necks? Such seems 
ever to have been the tendency of human movements, and 
sooner or later America will do as other peoples have done be- 
fore. No statesmanship can ward off the action of human law. 
Among the countless billions who have lived there has been but 
one Washington. He alone of all could resist that sweetest of 
all incense, the breath of real admiration, and could forego that 
sweetest of all morsels, power, freely granted by a free people. 
Kings have stepped down from thrones, but their thrones were 
not built upon freemen's hearts. Countless ages may pass before 
another Washington shall be born. The American statesman 
should study to retard as long as possible the coming of the day 
when a Washington shall again be necessary to freedom. 



THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY. 259 

Reclining upon an easy chair in the mid-afternoon beneath the 
corridor of the " Home" I watched the waves coming in from 
the east, and thought of my own native land and of the dear 
ones on the other side of the world. The waxing moon was 
climbing half-way up to the zenith, a dim, silvery spectre upon 
the hot, blue sky. It had been shining upon my own land, but a 
few short short hours before, perhaps had lighted up the faces 
of some of those who were so dear to me. As I looked, I almost 
fancied I could see them photographed upon its pale silvered 
plate. 

There, in my west-side snow-mantled home in Chicago were 
my children — my laughing little girl — a father's heart went out 
to enfold them. There were my good neighbors and true friends 
from all over the city. One by one they walked across the pol- 
ished plate, and bent upon me a kindly look. Friends of every 
nationality, Teuton and Hibernian, Frenchman and Norseman, 
Bohemian and Dane, Italian and Swede, Christian and Jew, rich 
and poor. Ah ! How I wished I could bid yon pale moon bear 
to them my own picture, looking, as I felt, brimful of good-will, 
and running over with kindly fellowship. To one and all I drink 
in a cup as full as yon sea — a cup brimming over with affection. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

TUTICORIN— PONDICHERRY— TANJORE — TRICHINOPOLY AND MA- 
DURA—HINDOO TEMPLES— A CHARMING RIDE- 
NATIVES AND THEIR DRESS. 

Tuticorin, March i, 1888. 

I COMMENCE this letter on the second story of Jack's Hotel at 
half-past one o'clock. Our ship lies five miles off, just in view. 
The place has no harbor, and the water near the shore is so 
shoal that vessels of any considerable size do not approach 
nearer to the town. Before night we must go off on a launch 
and quit India forever. I leave it with regret, and at the same 
time with a feeling of relief, for our travel over its vast distances 
has been one of labor and fatigue as well as of pleasure. We 
entered it at the mouth of the Hooghly two months ago. We went 
400 miles due north of Calcutta to Darjeeling and back ; then in 
a northwesterly direction, through many cities and districts, 1,600 
miles, to the boundary of Afghanistan ; thence southerly, through 
the heart of northern India, over 1,600 miles, to Bombay; then 
across the Deccan, via Madras, to this point, 1,180 miles. Besides, 
we travelled on branch roads about 150 miles — in all nearly 5,000 
miles, and are somewhat fatigued. We have travelled faithfully, 
observing and noting every thing as well and as intelligently as 
could be done in a land of many languages, and all of them un- 
known to us, and have consciences quite at rest. 

Just now I am feeling so good-natured that, like Uncle Toby, 
I could hardly kill a fly, for, in addition to ease of conscience, we 
have that further inducement to kindliness — the fact that we have 
just disposed of a delicious breakfast of fried prawns, juicy teal, 
fresh eggs, and shrimp-curry, washed down with a good whiskey 
soda and followed by fragrant tea. A balmy sea breeze fans the 
cheek, and I now and then look out at cheerful coolies with 
shining backs, carrying jagghery, the coarge sugar made from the 
palm, to the lighters for cargoes for the ships out on the roadstead. 

Formerly they made their living diving for pearls, for which 
this place was famous. Many an angel's tear has been congealed 
in the oyster's home near yonder small islands to deck woman's 
beauty and to add to the state of lordly rulers. Many a fair 
bride has stood before the altar in far western lands with pearls 
upon her brow and neck, won from the briny deep by the fore- 

260 



CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERN INDIA. 261 

fathers of yonder poor men and women, who are now bearing 
huge burdens upon their heads, sweating in the blazing sun for a 
daily wage which an American laborer would not hesitate to pay 
for a single cigar ; and yet they are cheerful and bright and are 
quite as contented in their ignorance and poverty as are our own 
favored, well-paid, and educated working people. After all, was 
it not a mistake of the poet when he wrote, " If ignorance be 
bliss," or was the little " if " really meant for a synonym of 
" since ? " The philosopher has not yet discovered the secret of 
how to make men happy. Preachers may preach, poets may 
sing, and the learned may philosophize, but Robby was right 
when he said that " man was made to mourn." 

It was quaint Lawrence Sterne, I think, who said " I pity the 
man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ' 'T is all 
barren.' " Our last trip in India more than ever convinced me he 
he was right, so many having said that southern India was barren of 
interest. The thistle on the arid plain bears a flower of exquisite 
beauty ; the edelweiss blooms in the edge of eternal snows ; the 
desert has sands of crystal clearness. There is no country which 
does not repay an observant traveller. " There are sermons in 
stones and good in all things." Southern India is full of beauty 
and running over in things of interest. Take Agra and Delhi 
out, and northern and central India fall below the southern in 
that which is really charming to travellers from all temperate 
zones. One should give a full share of time to that part south of 
a line drawn from Bombay to Calcutta. Yet this part is scarcely 
touched by tourists, and when touched at all is done as hurriedly 
as if disease and discomfort were everywhere to be found. 

It was not until we left Madras behind us that we really saw 
the India of dreams — a land with tropical vegetation in profusion 
and Hindoo temples in grandeur. It was in this section that the 
Dutch, Portuguese, and English first saw the country, and gave 
the pictures of India, both of brush and pen, which were seen by 
us in school-books, and gave those ideas of the whole land which 
only a visit to it can eradicate. Few people in America can 
realize that the great bulk of this country is a brown, dry, and 
apparently half-desert land during fully three fourths of the year, 
that only during the wet season does it wear a livery of green. 
Trees and shrubs are, it is true, green at all times, but the grass is 
brown and dry during fully nine months of the year. Shortly after 
leaving Madras we entered a region abounding in plantations of 
palms and rice, which made green the dominant color of the land- 
scape. 

We were for 200 and odd miles between the sea and the east- 
ern Ghauts and within the influence of ocean atmosphere. 

Here the cocoa-nut and other palms have their true homes, and 
give the landscape that tropical appearance which has so wonder- 
ful a charm. Here villages of natives are hidden in the shade of 



262 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

stately trees, and the broad spreading banyan is rarely out of 
sight, many of them fit to stand for specimen pictures. At Ma- 
dura is one that may be called perfect. I stepped it around 
carefully and found an almost true circle of 660 feet, or 220 feet 
diameter. This tree from every point of view presented the 
appearance of a flattened dome, with regular and even branches 
and regularly distributed aerial roots. There are several varieties 
of trees which send down such roots, and have all the appearance 
of the true banyan, and all being of the ficus or fig family. Small 
fibrous rootlets drop from a branch and grow downward through 
the air like long moss. If not disturbed, they ultimately reach 
the earth and at once take hold. The sap then runs up in them 
and they commence to support the parent tree. If a rootlet 
reaches a lower limb or the body of the tree before it does the 
earth, it not unfrequently attaches itself and takes hold like a 
parasite, and grows into the limb or trunk as if it had been an 
original part of it. The sap then passes from the roots of the 
tree indiscriminately through the main body and through this 
new attachment. Not unfrequently these aerial attachments 
become as large as the main body, and when they grow large or 
so thickly together as to touch laterally the main trunk, the whole 
will cohere and become a solid mass. This is particularly observed 
in the sacred banyan. We saw one specimen where a mass of 
aerial rootlets from branches close to the main trunk had met 
and matted together some eight or nine feet from the ground, 
then, becoming attached to the main body, had so grown into and 
become a part of it that the tree was fully ten times as large 
above the point of union as it was below. Oftentimes these trees 
are very grotesque in appearance, and when of any considerable 
size have interested us very much. 

In northern and central India the principal railroad trains run 
at night, so as to give the foreign population the cool air instead 
of hot day to travel in ; but in the south, the best trains being 
supported mainly by natives, are by day. We so timed our trip 
that we did the whole by daylight. Our first stop was at Pon- 
dicherry, the little French possession. I wanted to be for a few 
hours under some other flag than that of Britain, and besides, 
here a great deal of genuine French heroism was shown in the 
fights with England — acts of gallantry which should cause every 
Frenchman to feel proud of his flag. The district has only a 
little over 100 square miles of territory, and a population of less 
than 140,000, but supports the dignity of the French republic in 
a respectable manner. The town has 30,000 people, 700 of them 
being white, and is decidedly pretty. There are no pretensions 
to grandeur, but the streets are wide and beautifully shaded, the • 
trees running east and west being palms, on the cross streets of 
other woods. Every thing looks clean, and wears an air of quiet, 
old, respectable dignity. We regretted our stay was too limited 




GOPURAS OF HINDOO TEMPLE, MADURA, 



TRUE HINDOO TEMPLES. 263 

to permit us to pay our respects to the Governor, but at dinner 
we drank good French wine to the toast of " Vive la RepubHque." 
We saw the daily parade of the 200 native zouaves in pretty uni- 
forms. They showed good drilling, and were a handsome body 
of men. 

A hundred and odd miles brought us to Tanjore, through the 
most densely populated part of India, and the most productive. 
The land is low and flat, thoroughly watered, and growing an 
enormous amount of rice and cocoa-nuts. Rice was in every stage, 
from emerald green, just covering the paddy fields with young 
shoots, to the yellow ripe. Troops of men and women were in 
the water-soaked patches putting down the fresh plants, and 
troops were bearing great loads on their heads to the threshing- 
grounds. These threshing plats are artificially raised, and 
apparently each village owns one in common. I was informed 
that three crops a year are grown in the district. At Tanjore we 
saw our first grand Hindoo temple, and afterwards others at 
Trichinopoly and Madura. 

These temples are rather great walled forts, with temple 
attachments, than mere religious edifices, and during many wars, 
and particularly those of the French and English, were occupied 
and defended as forts. That at Tanjore is of the highest order 
architecturally. The two at Trichinopoly are the largest, and 
the one at Madura is in the best condition. Hundreds of 
thousands of pilgrims from all over India visit them every year, 
and during the April festivals in such masses that disastrous 
accidents are not unusual, now and then causing hundreds to be 
crushed by the excited multitudes. They are dedicated to Vishnu 
or Shiva. 

The largest is almost a half mile square, and consists of seven 
different concentric enclosures, each surrounded by lofty, solid 
masonary walls, 20 to 30 feet high and four feet thick, the one 
enclosure being each within the next outer one, and each 
separated from the next by several hundred feet of space, with a 
street lined with houses. In the centre of each wall, and facing 
the four cardinal points of the compass, are massive tapering 
buildings, from five to eight stories in height. They are 50 to 
100 and over, feet high, with the entire exteriors a mass of figures 
representing the various incarnations of the God and his attend- 
ants. The loftiest is about 150 feet in height. These buildings 
(Gopuras), 28 in all, are the gateways leading through the several 
enclosures to the centre of the whole. Between the first and 
second there is a large population regardless of caste. Between 
each of the other walls the population is regulated as to caste 
until the fifth is reached. In this only Brahmins can live. In the 
sixth there are certain offices and temple adjuncts which only 
Brahmins can enter. In the central, or seventh inclosure, are the 
sacred precincts of the God ; and into it only the priesthood can. 



264 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

enter, and they only for the performance of certain sacred rites. 
It answers to the " Holy of Holies " of Solomon's temple. It is 
said that the Prince of Wales intimated a desire to view within 
this sacred inclosure. He was earnestly asked by the priests not 
to press the request, as it would cost at least 10,000 rupees to 
purify it if it should become contaminated by his presence. This 
whole thing is called a temple, and is filled by temple buildings 
and houses occupied by people more or less connected with the 
temple service or employed on their estates outside. It would 
require weeks and months to study them in detail, and would 
repay only those who wish to study the mysteries of Hindoo 
religion. There are several other places in southern India where 
such temples exist. At the old palace at Tanjore reside several 
of the begums (widows) of the last rajah, who died some 50 years 
ago. They did not ascend the burning pyre, and have lived here 
in seclusion and are gradually dying out and relieving England of 
the expense of supporting them. Thirty miles of run brought us 
to Trichinopoly, a large town, now famous for its cigar manufac- 
tories. I purchased from a manufacturer 500 well-made weeds, 
of " Henry Clay " size, for eight rupees — less than two thirds of a 
cent apiece. They were really good, but rather low-flavored cigars. 
Before reaching Trichinopoly we entered into the extension of 
the granite or Sienite mountains, which run north into the 
Deccan and furnish the peculiar mountain scenery about 
Hyderabad. They had been a rugged background for the land- 
scape for many miles, and relieved it of its monotony. Here 
they are hardly mountains, but have become high, loose, rocky 
hills, or monster " rocks" protruding from the plains, frequently 
several hundred feet high, often smooth and rounded like vast 
•domes, or jagged and broken into most grotesque shapes. The 
Roc.k of Trichinopoly, crowned by a temple, and once walled 
in by a fort, is several hundred feet high, its sides smooth and 
precipitous, and climbed only by steps cut into the solid face. It 
is not unlike a mighty elephant with its legs extended 
forward and back, in the position the beast takes when he comes 
■down to permit one to mount his back. By the way, one of these 
.animals attached to the temple at the foot of the " Rock" met us 
as we came down. He had climbed up 100 steps to make 
his salaam (bow) to us and to beg for backshish. It was a queer 
sight when the awkward-looking monster descended again to his 
stabling below. He went down, however, nearly as easily as we 
did, and at the foot wheeled around with a twinkle in his eye, and 
stretched out his snout in a way which plainly said : " Now Mr. 
Yankee, don't you think I deserve more than you gave me 
above?" I threw him a copper coin. He blew a loud whistle 
and put his foot upon it in contempt. He then pointed to a 
rupee which his wily mahout had laid on the flagging as a hint to 
lus. I told him " Beggars should not be choosers," and threw him 



A CHARMING RIDE. 265 

a small silver coin. Our guide translated what I said. For a 
moment he paid no attention to the tiny silver, but, seeing he 
would get no more, picked it up and gave it to his mahout, and 
even condescended to take the copper. I then gave his proboscis 
a rub and put on it another coin. He got down on his knees to 
give us a profound good-by. At each of the temples we have 
visited in these localities there are several elephants, which per- 
formed for us and got their rewards. They are more or less 
sacred. 

The view from the " Rock " at sunrise, and for an hour or two 
after, was superb. The great plain, with its rice-fields, the forest 
of palms, the different rocky points scattered, over the plain, 
the river stretching like a great serpent of sand, for its bed 
was nearly dry, and the city below and around us made a picture 
as charming as it was unique. 

The ride of 98 miles to Madura was delightful. Although we 
started at noon, and the sun was blazing hot, the motion of the 
train gave us a pleasant breeze. We had several green cocoa-nuts, 
freshly plucked in the cool morning, and partly cut so that we 
could open them with our pen-knives. The water (not yet milk) 
is a delicious drink, and has been freely taken by us ever since we 
reached Siam. The scenery was of paddy fields, green and vari- 
gated ; dense thickets and jungles of cactus and prickly pear, 
purple in bud and golden in flower; small trees and bushes covered 
with a mass of vines, deIiciouslygreen,and many glorious in bloom ; 
about the hamlets and wells were great bushes and clumps of 
oleander, of several tints, purple, pink, and delicate rose mottled 
with white, and all a mass of the loveliest of flowers ; great 
artificial tanks as large as lakes, where the water of the rainy 
season, now past a couple of months, is stored for the dry season 
coming; a fine range of mountains in front of us, lifting from 
2,000 feet nearest us to 5,000 or more feet over, and beyond piled 
in artistic confusion of range and peak, and all covered with 
forests, not dense, but sufficiently so to make, what is so rare in 
India at this season, verdure-covered mountain heights, slopes and 
gorges. We entered this range by a handsome valley on a con- 
siderable grade. Mountains were on each side clothed in forest, 
the umbrella-tree predominating, with a crown of branches shaped 
like a flat-spreading parasol. All was so green, and the fields were 
so thrifty, that one could almost imagine himself in Japan, were it 
not for the large troop of goats and sheep, the latter of a brown 
color, almost red. 

I have noticed that the sheep, and even some of the birds, take 
to some extent the hue of the soil or rocks over which they range. 
In the Deccan, where the volcanic tufa and trap rocks covering 
the plains are black, the sheep are black, and the kites are gray, 
like the crags in which they nest. Here the soil is red and the 
granite hills reddish ; the sheep and the kites are of a reddish- 



266 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

brown. We saw from the rail a remarkable sunset effect. To the 
westward was a very broken range of mountains, rising in cones 
and peaks piled in confused heaps. The atmosphere seemed 
charged with a sort of mist, the rays of the sun lightening it up 
into a luminous medium. The light seemed to come from below 
and out of this,instead of from above. The mountains appeared 
to be floating in a fluid all glowing with light. Here and there a 
high peak cast a shadow, making great lines of sunlight, so dis- 
tinct and marked, that they seemed tranparent masses of gold- 
tinted crystal stretching through the air. Immediately under the 
declining sun the mountain masses were so bright and glowing 
that we seemed to be looking upon the interior of a furnace. 
The whole effect, I think, arose from the mountain atmosphere 
being filled with dust — a sort of dust-mist. It lasted for a quarter of 
an hour, and was so beautiful that it brought to me a feeling almost 
of pain, perhaps akin to the sensations of a refined blind person 
when listening to delicious music. We spent an entire day at 
Madura, in its fine temple and driving among the cocoa-nut and 
the palm groves about it, and along roads bordered with gro- 
tesque old banyans. 

The roads in southern, as in every part of India, are superb 
(England has built such vast lines of splendid roads out here that 
one of us could not resist the temptation of calling her the 
" Colossus of Roads"), and are always shaded by fine trees; in 
the south with palms, tamarinds, banyans, or mangoes, all of good 
size and with lustrous foliage. In the south the railroads are 
fenced in with hedges of aloes (century plants), noble plants from 
four to eight feet high, and now with great flower-spikes 15 to 30 
feet tall and as large at the base as a man's thigh. This plant is 
used in Bengal for hedges as well as here, but there they do not 
grow as large or as beautifully regular as in this quarter. The 
fibre of the tall flower-stalk is being largely used in the manufac- 
ture of cordage, not only for domestic purposes but also for ships. 
It is far more pliant and flexible than that made from hemp, or of 
what we call sea-grass. For lines on a ship it can be handled 
when new, while the other is stiff until after being used for some 
time. Large quantities of this fibre is shipped to Tuticorin. I 
think it is a rather newly discovered industry. 

The run from Madura here, above lOO miles, did not afford as 
green and fine scenery as that immediately beyond, but was not 
wanting in these conditions. Lofty mountains were always in 
sight to the west. A large area is planted in millet or doura of 
the small variety, about as high as wheat, and with heads but 
little larger. I cannot give a better idea of the cheapness of labor 
here than by stating that this grain is to a large extent harvested 
by cutting off the heads by hand, leaving the straw to be after- 
ward cut for fodder, or to be fed down on the ground. There are 
vast numbers of cattle, goats, and many sheep, which are fed 



NATIVE WOMEN AND DRESS. 267 

almost entirely on this straw, stacks and ricks being seen in every 
direction. There is also in this section a great breadth of country 
planted in cotton, here tall, vigorous plants, and beautifully green, 
flecked with white bolls. 

Thousands of cotton-pickers were in the fields, the women, 
with their bright scarlet skirts and scarfs, making the green fields 
look as if ornamented with huge red flowers. The dress of the 
women is a cloth wrapped around the waist and falling nearly to 
the ankles, and then a scarf thrown over the left shoulder and 
caught below the waist under the right arm, leaving the right 
shoulder, arm, and part of the back free and uncovered. When 
at work the skirt is caught up between the legs and fastened at 
the waist, making a sort of loose, flowing hippen. The laboring 
men and boys are nearly nude, with a short cloth around their 
hips, and often with only a small clout not much larger than a 
fig-leaf, a fig-leaf, too, of verj' dwarfed size. We have become so 
accustomed to nearly naked people that we have grown to almost 
admire it, and to consider the least dress the best dress. I have 
grown quite used to that sort of thing, and quote Thomson co7t 
amore : 

" Oh, fair undress, best dress ! It checks no vein, 
But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns, 
And heightens ease with grace. 

Frequently as we passed near a lot of cotton-pickers the 
younger ones would salute the passing cars. I noticed that my 
two boys invariably took the salutations of the girls as being 
made expressly for themselves. An oldish man relearns much 
forgotten human nature by travelling with boys. 

I must not forget to tell how water is generally drawn from 
wells and deep tanks for irrigation in southern India. It is done 
with the use of the old-fashioned sweep, identified among us with 
" the old oaken bucket " of the song. Instead of lifting the bucket 
with the hand, aided by the sweep, one, two, and often four and 
five men walk the lofty sweep out towards the large end, when 
the huge skin bucket is filled, and by their weight lifting it from 
the well or tank ; the walkers above pace towards the centre or 
pivot until the bucket again descends into the well, much the 
same as the " trick horse " plan's "see-saw" or "teeter" in the 
circus. The pole being small and very steep, when the bucket is 
lifted causes the men above to look like shining, naked, black, 
tight-rope walkers. The natives are very dark, and many of them 
quite as black as negroes, but with symmetrical forms, delicate, 
finely-chiseled features, beautiful feet and hands, ivory teeth, 
unless stained, as is generally the case, with beetel-nut ; soft, 
pretty eyes, and glossy black, silken hair. Many of the men and 
boys are very handsome. The young women and girls are nearly 
all pretty, and many really beautiful. My boys were constantly 



268 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

calling out : " Look ! there 's a beauty ! " The men, when 
dressed, generally wear white garments; the women nearly 
always gay and bright colors. 

The universal habit of carrying heavy loads on their head and 
wearing the arms bare, untramelled, and swinging, gives the 
women beautiful, free gaits. When will our women cease the 
wretched habit of carrying the arms folded like the wings of a 
trussed turkey? It is one of the abominations following the ugly, 
ungainly, and health-destroying French fashions and costumes. 
No woman wearing such costume can possibly have an artistically 
easy motion. The vaunted swan-like swimming motion of some 
of the queens of society is pretty simply because conventionalism 
has made it so. It is not the motion given our grandmother 
Eve when her Creator sent her tripping over Eden's hillsides and 
leaping babbling brooks to gather rose leaves and sweet violets to 
make soft her bridal bed. Her arms swung free, no stays bound 
her willowy form, no high-heeled French boots made corns on her 
rosy little toes ; " grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye." 
She did not swim, but bounded so lightly that the dew-drops 
were hardly brushed away by her feet. 

I commenced this at Tuticorin, whence we sailed last night. I 
end it near noon as we approach Colombo, having finished India 
proper which we entered the 2nd of January, two months ago 
to-day. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

CEYLON— THE COCOA PALM THE PEOPLE'S FRIEND— TEA, COFFEE. 
AND CINCHONAS— CHARMING MOUNTAIN RETREAT— ENGLISH 
RULE IN INDIA— STRICTURES ON THE ENGLISHMAN'S MAN- 
NERS. 

Colombo, March 13, 1888. 

Ceylon is generally visited by tourists before they enter India, 
and on their way thither. It gives them their first view of rich 
tropical verdure, and following either Egypt or China wears by 
comparison a most gorgeous mantle. It was from the writings of 
such that we had built our expectations. While I can hardly say 
we are disappointed, we are not carried ofT our feet as others seem 
to have been. I think our course the preferable. We left the 
best for the last, and up to it we were constantly growing. We 
had not the wonderful wealth of green of the Cinnamon Islands 
constantly on memory's chart to make other places, by compari- 
son, seem sterile. We were not overwhelmed by its glories, yet 
have those glories to linger with us as the last mise en scene of 
our Oriental travels. 

The island has an area of 24,000 miles, and is pear-shaped. Its 
northern or stem end, bending toward India, is almost connected 
thereto by a chain of rocky land called " Adam's Bridge." 
Through the length of the island stretches a range of mountains, 
apparently a prolongation of the granite and syenite ranges which 
come down on either shore of the great peninsula. In Ceylon the 
chain so widens out in the bulge of the pear as to form a great 
mass of irregular piles thrown together in wild confusion, and 
reaching its highest altitude of 8,200 feet in very nearly the centre 
of this bulge, or from 60 to 70 miles from the sea, east, south, and 
west ; along the whole coast stretches a low plain, varying from 
two or three to ten or fifteen miles in width. This low land about 
the northern neck of the island is largely planted in Palmyra 
palms. For 120 miles along the western and southwestern shore 
it is a fringe from one to seven miles deep of cocoa-nut trees. 
These two kinds of trees support the bulk of the native popula- 
tion. They furnish the material from which they build and roof 
their huts. The sap gives them their sugar and their intoxicants. 
The green nut is their milk, and the ripe nut much of their solid 
food. From the bark and leaves they make sheds, fans, and 
matting ; from the fibre, sails, cordage, fishing nets, etc. The 

269 



270 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

young leaves are their salads. The ripe fruit gives them oil for 
their lamps, for their hair, and for cooking purposes. They wear 
for clothing the net woven by nature about the footstalks of the 
leaves ; plait hats and sunshades and baskets from the fronds, 
and drink from the cup ; sail in boats constructed of the hard, old 
wood, and when sick make medicine from the flowers. The uses 
of the palm are said to run into several hundred, and are the 
theme of native poems. 

The interest, however, to me in these trees was not so much in 
what or how many forms they are helpers of man, as in the long 
aisles, with the thousand slender columns, the deep shade, and 
the cool retreats they afforded from the burning rays of the 
tropical sun. There is a wonderful charm in looking down the 
long vistas of stately palms, through whose widespreading fronds 
the sun can scarcely penetrate, and see hut after hut scattered 
about in artistic confusion, with women sitting about the doors 
spinning or plaiting, children romping, cocks crowing and 
strutting, and squirrels chasing each other. It is so tropical, so 
calm and home-like, and yet so strange and weird. 

The mountain scenery of Ceylon is very beautiful. The peaks 
are broken and jagged ; the slopes and gorges green and wooded. 
The valleys are very tortuous, forcing the roads to mount the 
heights by many windings and curves, through tunnels and over 
frightful precipices. The entire island is covered with a network 
of gravelled roads, laid out with great skill and built with care. 
The entire length of the island is only 267 miles, by 140 in its great- 
est breadth. Yet there are something like 2,000 miles of well- 
engineered roads, about 1,500 miles being metalled or graded. 
These roads permeate every part of the island, and have brought 
each and every part within eas}^ access of every other. There are 
two main railroads finished. One of 128 miles takes one from 
Co-lombo, where the coolest nights rarely carrry the ther- 
mometer below 72 degrees, up to Nuwara Eliya, where, from 
December to the middle of March, there is frost during clear 
nights. This is a beautiful ride through scenery rarely surpassed 
on any railroad. Now up steep grades, overlooking valleys 
terraced for rice and lying 1,000 or more feet almost under you ; 
then under frowning peaks lifting their rocky crags 1,000, 2,000, 
and 3,000 feet almost vertically over your head ; now along the 
steep sides of a mountain, bending in and out of its gorges, and 
darting through tunnels, with tea or coffee plantations making 
the steep slopes far below you or opposite on the other side of 
the valley, shine in brilliant, glossy green. It is a sad sight, how- 
ever, now and then, to see noble coffee estates of hundreds of 
acres entirely abandoned because of the blight which threatened 
a few years ago to drive this culture from the island, and nearly 
ruined the planters. The coffee is a beautiful plant, growing 
three to five feet high — the first when pruned so as to spread 



COFFEE, TEA, AND CINCHONAS. ,271 

out like an umbrella, the latter when the suckers are permitted 
to lift up. There were formerly nearly 200,000 acres in coffee, 
but now about 100,000, and much of this is being rapidly replaced 
by tea, which has been planted between the rows. These are cut 
away when the tea plant, at two or three years old, is fit for 
plucking. 

I conversed with very intelligent planters, who believed the 
day for coffee-culture was not past, and that proper manuring 
would enable the plant to outgrow the effects of the parasite, and 
would still make the product sufficiently remunerative to repay 
the extra care. There are in the island 150,000 acres in tea. 
Most of this is yet young, and the plants do not make the pretty 
fields which one sees so green and shapely in Japan. Here tea is 
plucked continuously. In China and Japan only twice a year. 
The Japs grow and gather their own crops, and care little for 
return of interest on investments, — each having only a small 
patch cultivated in conjunction with other crops. Here the 
culture is entirely in the hands of Europeans, who have estates of 
200 and up to i,ooo acres. These planters grow nothing for home 
consumption. They buy every thing they eat or consume. Their 
crops are tea and coffee and cinchonas — one, or perhaps all. If 
the crop proves in any year a failure, then ruin or mortgage is the 
lot of the planter. The coffee blights threatened absolute ruin. 
But there was shown much pluck, and many of the estates were 
rapidly turned to tea, and now there seems to be a general feeling 
of hope for the future. There are 35,000 acres in cinchonas, 13,000 
in cocoa (coco), and 35,000 in cinnamon. The latter is grown on 
the plains or hot-lands, and is mostly in the hands of well-to-do 
natives and Urasians. Cocoa takes a middle altitude. Coffee and 
tea the more upper lands. 

The hot months of Ceylon are February, March, and April. 
These, too, are the dry months. Every one who can rushes to 
the hills, where the nights, at least, are cool. On the tea estates 
the rise and fall of the thermometer during the 24 hours of these 
months is very great and very trying to those who are compelled 
to expose themselves. At mid-day in the shade the temperature 
rises to between 85 and 98 degrees, while it sinks at night to be- 
tween 32 and 40 degrees. The remaining nine months it does not 
vary more than 10 or 15 degrees, or from 60 to 85. During these 
nine months the heat at Colombo and on the coast is greater than 
during the winter months, but considered more healthy. For in 
the winter the breezes come from over the low lands back, and is 
laden with fever, while from May to December the southwest 
monsoon brings sea-air, healthy, and if not always cool in itself, yet 
cooling. 

The charming railroad of 74 miles carries the traveller to Kandy, 
the ancient Singalese capital. This is a picturesque place, with 
some beautiful views, a residence of the governor, and a Buddhist 



272 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

temple, where, in a wonderfully rich shrine, one of Gautama's 
teeth is kept. This is one of the treasures of the " light of Asia," 
for which, it is said, the King of Siam offered a million not long 
since, but in vain. The priests having it in their care are said to 
be among the most intelligent and learned of the eastern craft, 
and possess Buddhistic lore of great antiquity and value. One of 
the attendants informed me with much pride that Edwin Arnold 
worshipped at this shrine when last in Ceylon. I cannot say that 
Edwin is a Buddhist, but his writings show him quite deeply im- 
bued with reverence for Siddartha (Gautama). One cannot talk 
with the intelligent people at this temple without being impressed 
with the fact that their creed rests with them upon enlightened 
faith, and not upon blind superstition. The priests, too, wear an 
expression of calm dignity utterly at variance with bigotry or 
fanaticism. 

Near Kandy are the celebrated Paredeniya botanical gardens, 
founded by the late king of Ceylon, but supported since 1815, when 
England determined she wanted all of the island, by the govern- 
ment. Here we found much that was interesting, but were, on 
the whole, disappointed. We had read at such length of the gar- 
dens that we possibly expected too much. There is not so great a 
variety of tropical plants as are seen at Singapore. They are 
older, and make a finer show, but that is all. The fine old ficus 
elasticae or india-rubber trees were very large and curious. They 
are of the same family as the banyan, and send down aerial roots, 
only more sparingly. Their surface roots are marvels, stretching 
on the top of the ground to the same distance as the wide- 
spreading branches above, and twisting and contorting like thin 
flukes of iron, six, eight, and on to twenty inches high. They look 
like huge, thin reptiles, and cause the natives to name the tree the 
" Snake tree." Many at home have seen the rubber tree in our 
green-houses, with great leaves many inches long. They will be, 
as I was, surprised to learn that as the tree grows older the leaves 
contract until in the old ones they are not much larger than the 
leaf of our cotton-wood or the balm of Gilead. Not only this, but 
very many other, if not the majority of tropical trees, have very 
much larger leaves when young than when old. The young shoots 
of teak and banyans have foliage nearly a foot long, while the full- 
grown trees have leaves not more than three inches in length. I 
called the attention of the intelligent Scotch superintendent to 
this, and had from him the information I give above. The nut- 
meg, clove, and allspice, and many varieties of palms in this 
garden, are very interesting. We saw a beautiful specimen of the 
talipot palm in full bloom. This noble tree blooms but once, and 
then dies, — blooms at from 40 to 60 years old, throwing out huge 
feathers or plumes of flowers, six to eight feet in length, and 
probably 18 inches in diameter. This one tree had 27 of 
these huge plumes drooping like ostrich feathers. Well it may 



PAREDENIYA GARDEN. 273 

die. Like the century plant, its one effort is worthy a long life, 
and the glory of the performance is deserving the wonderful dec- 
oration which is spread over its death-scene. This, however, has 
a privilege the aloe has not. The latter blooms, and its flower 
dies, leaving an ashy dead stalk before the plant below dies. The 
talipot blooms, and while its huge flowers are waving on its lofty 
crest, the largest flower in the world, the fronds below droop and 
die, and then the flower fades and turns to ripened seed on the 
lofty stem, which to all appearances is dead and already dry. The 
flower outlives its supporting tree. 

One of the most interesting books on Ceylon I had read before 
leaving home, was the little monograph of Prof. Haeckel. He 
spoke of the gi' it bamboos of Paredeniya, as being two feet in 
diameter. I looked in vain for them, but found none larger than 
nine inches. Being unwilling to think that a German savant could 
have made such a mistake, I asked for the monsters, and was in- 
formed by the superintendent that probably the largest bamboo 
in Ceylon would not exceed ten inches. Detecting the worthy 
scientist in this mistake made me feel less fearful of gainsaying 
his assertion that Kandy is a stiff and ugly place. To me it has 
several splendid views. By the way, he made us commit a most 
ridiculous blunder. He speaks of the land-leeches of Ceylon as 
being such disagreeable pests that we followed his advice and 
brought from home, greatly to our inconvenience, huge, high rub- 
ber boots, coming up to the thigh. Willie long ago got tired of 
his, and sold them to the captain of our ship in Siam. I held on 
to mine, and have just as much need of them as of a pair of spurs 
aboard ship. By a most singular coincidence, a few days after 
we had searched these gardens for this huge bamboo, we read in 
the daily paper of Colombo, a letter from a resident also taking 
exceptions to the professor's grass story. Travellers tell huge 
stories, the very exaggeration in them preventing belief, but 
nearly all seize upon isolated facts, and so describe them that in- 
nocent readers think them rules, instead of exceptions. There 
are land-leeches in Ceylon, and India, too, which are frequently 
disagreeable, but they are not so prevalent that one should take 
disagreeable precaution to avoid them. Haeckel, being out in 
dews and rains, seeking specimens, suffered. The ordinary 
traveller need not suffer much. Before we went to the north of 
India I had an irritation about the ankles, which tempted a large 
amount of scratching. It passed off during our three weeks in a 
cool latitude, but returned again in the south, and still annoys me 
somewhat — the result, I suppose, of some parasitic bite. It could 
be removed at once by slight applications of carbolic. It is quite 
amusing to read the guide-books, with their long lists of necessary 
articles for travel. Many incumber themselves with these things. 
One of the great annoyances in travelling is a large amount of 
luggage. We brought much more than we have needed. From 



274 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the time one reaches Japan, travelling with the sun, every article 
a traveller can need is to be had, and far cheaper than anywhere 
in America ; clothing at less than half price. 

We found Nuwara Eliya a charming place in which to rest. It 
is in a pretty valley, nestled among high mountains, and has an 
altitude of 6,200 feet. Mount Pedro lifts 2,000 feet higher, 
reached from Nuwara by a two hours' walk. From its summit, 
about sun-rise, the view is superb. The whole of Ceylon may be 
said to be mapped out around in most picturesque peaks and 
deep valleys. Each country has a different cloud effect from 
every other. In Ceylon it is varied and very beautiful, and 
admirably seen from Mount Pedro. We started from our hotel 
with the first streak of day, and while enjoying the wonderful 
panorama about us on the summit, took our breakfast, which had 
been sent to us. Full of our joys, we leisurely descended, gather- 
ing rare mosses and catching exquisite bits of views from openings 
in the mountain forest, when a gleam of lightning told us a storm 
was brewing. We were too late to escape, for it came upon us 
very rapidly and in a very deluge. The trunk of a tree and an 
umbrella partially screened us. Our mountain path soon became 
the bed of a torrent, threatening to carry us down. The storm, 
however, passed almost as rapidly as it had arisen, leaving us 
thoroughly drenched, but hardly regretting it. It was one more 
sensation and a new experience. 

This place is a resort during the hot weather, from January to 
May, and has a gubernatorial cottage. It abounds with beautiful 
drives and walks, and has near by a botanical garden for trees 
and plants fitted for high altitudes. It would seem that the old 
boast of the Singalese, that their island was the original paradise 
of man in his purer estate, was not without some foundation. Its 
delicious clime certainly fitted it for man when he spinned not 
and did not toil ; clothing was unnecessary ; its valleys abounded 
in fruits, and its mountain forests were mighty parterres of blos- 
soms and flowers. For the white man it is too hot, and must 
cause rapid deterioration, but for the dark-skinned, it furnishes a 
congenial and beautiful home. It is as beautiful as Japan, and its 
people are light and graceful, but have not the wonderful 
versatility and cheerfulness which makes the Japanese people so 
charming. 

Ceylon has several distinct races living upon it. Long before 
history began to be written, it had prosperous peoples, and con- 
tinued so for ages. It has old cities, deserted centuries ago, and 
great tanks for gathering and holding water for irrigation pur- 
poses, which show that portions of the island, now wild in waste, 
were once teeming with population. The ruins and the tanks are 
all that is left as a record of the people who built them. Even 
the descendants of these people have dwindled down to a little 
over 2,000, and are wild, almost animal savages, shunning civil- 



THE NA TI VES. CA TAMARANS. 2 7 5 

ized men. The Singalese, who have Persian and Arab blood in 
them, are rather fair, deHcate in form and organization ; are ex- 
pert manipulators in jewelry, and other delicate work — all Bud- 
dhists, and number less than 2,000,000. They were, many gen- 
erations ago, overrun by Tamils — vigorous, hardy, nearly black 
men from southern India — who, to-day, number about two thirds 
of a million, and are the hard workers, and Hindoo in religion. 
The mixed bloods — called Eurasians, or Burghers — are the de- 
scendants of the Portuguese, who held the island for nearly a cen- 
tury and a half ; and of the Dutch, who controlled it for a century 
and a third, and number less than 20,000. These, with many 
Singalese, are Catholics. Other people swell the population to 
2,700,000, and are governed by less than 5,000 Europeans. These 
latter are planters and ofificials. Eurasians and full natives have 
cinnamon gardens. 

By the way, this plant, when cultivated, is kept down to a small 
shrub, not over eight feet high. In the forest it grows to a pretty 
tree, as large as the pear. A cinnamon garden is pretty, the 
foliage being very glossy, and of light, cheerful green. The bark 
on the green stems, while spicy, has not the pungency of the 
cured article. The sun, in curing, seems to bring this out. I will 
here state that the growing tea-leaf has no more flavor than an 
ordinary tasteless weed, and gives no promise to the uninitiated 
of that wonderful quality which makes it the sweetest friend and 
kindest solace of so many countless millions of human beings. It 
has its wonderful properties brought out by sun or fire-heat. A 
few of the fine brands in China are sun-cured, but do not reach 
the general markets, being confined to the larders of the very 
rich Celestial connoisseurs. Cinnamon and rice-cultivation is 
confined to the low, hot lands of this island, and is in the hands, 
generally, of the old population. They and the Tamils are the 
fishermen. 

The native boat is a queer thing. A log of wood from 10 to 
20 feet long, turned upward at each end, is dug out into a shallow 
trough, rarely over a foot wide. On top of this the boat is 
carried with boards to a length twice as great as the solid keel 
below, and, say, two feet high, and of about the same width. 
From this craft springs two bent poles to a light log of wood, six 
to ten feet off. This out-rigger makes the queer Singalese cata- 
maran, one of the safest small boats which run out into the sea. 
The native sits with one foot in, and one outside, of the narrow 
trough, and rows or sails far out on the deep, and can brave a 
storm the ordinary long boat could not survive. They are rowed 
rapidly and sail 8 to 12 knots an hour. Two small platforms, 
say four feet square, are built on top. On these the boat- 
man carries his freight and the fisherman his nets. I am told 
fishermen frequently go forty miles to sea. All along the coast 
the natives are semi-amphibious. A number of half-grown boys 



276 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

surround steamers, coming and going on queer little rafts built of 
three buoyant sticks 10 to 12 feet long and lashed together. 
Upon this the half-naked fellows sit on their legs and paddle 
very rapidly. So expert are they at diving that a silver coin 
thrown 30 to 50 feet off, never reaches the bottom before it is 
caught. Passengers get several of these boats around in a semi- 
circle off from the steamer, then drop a small coin close to the 
ship. The boys spring toward it and swim up to the point, then 
go headlong below, squirming like frogs after the shining metal. 
They will even get a copper, but not very far off. They like the 
whiteness of the purer metal. These boys are all quite dark, but 
the bottoms of their feet are almost white. Why? 

The Singalese are a comely looking race, with features quite 
effeminate in their delicacy. This appearance is further increased 
by their long hair, tied in a knot at the back of the head and held 
smooth by a light tortoise-shell comb, such as young girls at home 
wore when I was young. The dress is the universal band of 
cloth, here left to fall like a skirt ; a jacket is worn in the cities — 
in the country and villages only cotton cloth is thrown over the 
shoulders. The women about cities have, to a great extent, 
adopted a semi-European costume. At least, those I saw had. 
The Tamil population dress as the southern Indian does. The 
tea and coffee estates are worked and the heavy labor about cities 
is done by coolies, brought annually from the coast of southern 
India, from Malabar to Madras. That region furnishes coolie 
labor west of Singapore, as China does east thereof. They are a 
hardy, hard-working people, but not so steady and plodding as 
the Chinese. Who is ? In the jinrickisha, however, he pulls and 
runs nearly as well as the Jap. This pretty little carriage is much 
used on the fine roads of Ceylon. 

This leads me to speak of another anode of conveyance here 
and. in India — the bullock cart. The Indian bullocks all have the 
hump, but in other respects they vary in form and appearances as 
much as do the different breeds of our cattle — in some localities, 
very tall and long horned. I have seen a yoke over 16 hands 
high, and have seen horns over three feet in length. These horns, 
in whole districts, point up and toward each other. In other 
localities they spread and often bend downward. In Burmah the 
ox is fair-sized, but his horns are very short. In Ceylon he is 
very small, compactly built, and has little nubs for horns, and is 
very pretty and very quick in motion. At Kalutara, near the 
south end of the island, three of us rode in a little cart drawn by 
a bullock 41 inches high, and not much longer from his horns to 
the root of his tail. The brave little fellow trotted at a gait of 
six miles per hour. When, after a steady pull he felt tired, he 
would give a quick back motion, as much as to say, hold on. He 
is an admirable beast for villages. He requires no harness. His 
little yoke is fastened to the ends of the shafts ; drop it over his 



BULLOCK CARTS. FRULTS. 277 

neck, and tie a cord to keep him from throwing it off, and he is 
ready. But the Englishman rarely deigns to use him. What a 
queer compound John Bull is. He loves liberty and yet is a slave 
to public opinion. He hates and abuses Hindoo caste, and yet 
is a worshipper of his own caste. He must be in good form, or 
his caste is lost. I said to a party : " Why do you not use the 
pretty bullock cart?" " Oh, we can't do that. The natives use 
it. We walk if we can't get a pony. It would not do." I could 
not help saying: "Oh, you miserable humbug! You bully the 
natives and wretched public opinion bullies you." 

We have had both mangoes and mangostines here, but in 
rather limited quantities. I was afraid we would see no more of 
them, but at Kalutara we sat down to as many as we could get 
away with. They were costly, but we wished and got a fill. 
And what a fill ! If the Christians will get rid of the honey in 
tlieir idea of heaven and substitute mangostines it would be much 
more inviting. The pine-apples, too, are splendid. We have had 
bread-fruit cooked — fried like potatoes and boiled. I like the 
latter very much — not unlike boiled chestnuts. It and the jack- 
fruit are similar in appearance, only the former is as large as a 
large watermelon ; the other, the size of two small cocoa-nuts put 
end to end. 

We have now finished that vast country, or these vast countries, 
which we in America consider India, including India proper, the 
Straits Settlements, Burmah and Ceylon ; these, taken together, 
forming a mighty link in that cordon of England's dependencies 
which stretch around the world, and upon which the sun never 
sets. 

While making our three and a quarter months' journeyings in 
these lands, I have not only observed the physical formation and 
characteristics of the country and the manners and customs of the 
people of the various sections run over, and their ethnological 
habits and peculiarities, but I endeavored to study calmly and 
dispassionately the relations existing between the conquering 
masters from England and the conquered natives. I went to 
these countries with every possible prejudice aroused in favor of 
the dominant race and their manner of dealing with the subdued 
people. I had read the books of several travellers from our own 
land, who gave glowing accounts of what the Englishmen had 
done for the vast El Dorado of all times. But now, after quitting, 
I am forced to say that there is much in the relations existing 
between the whites and the dark-skinned which is not satisfactory. 

I am not prepared to say much which would be instructive, or 
perhaps new, to the student and scholarly Oriental observer; yet 
I may, perhaps, be able to say something interesting to many who 
have not the time nor the opportunity to give a close application 
to the great questions involved in the march of conquest by 
England over a great part of the mighty continent of Asia. 



278 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

While I have seen much in India, and, indeed, throughout the 
East, of the effects of English ascendency which pained me, yet 
from a deep-seated love for Anglo-Saxon ideas of civil liberty, I 
am convinced that in Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic lovers of freedom 
will be found the true and real bulwark of liberty throughout 
the world. The Anglo-Saxon has had opportunities for develop- 
ing on the sea-girt isle, the only genuine civil liberty which has 
ever existed ; but there is in the strong, manly fibre, and true, 
warm heart of the Teuton, the germ of the same love of freedom 
and the courage, to maintain it, which has borne such glorious 
fruitage among their cousins and congeners among English- 
speaking people. The tradition of ages, and the constant 
pressure from external forces have, however, repressed that civil 
liberty among continental Teutons, which has grown to so 
grand proportions on the British island and has spread in America 
as a mighty tree. Though there be, perhaps, but little civil 
liberty, yet there exists another kind in Germany, which no 
imperial mandate nor military heel can crush out — manly, hearty, 
whole-souled personal liberty. Denied civil liberty by the force 
of circumstances, and the inevitable pressure from without, the 
Teuton bravely fights for fatherland, and permits imperial hands 
to place the crown upon its own imperial brow, while refusing to 
accept it as the gift of the people, but claiming it as a heaven-given 
right. The Teuton bravely fights for fatherland and upholds his 
kaiser, but says, in tones to which the imperial rulers dare not 
turn a deaf ear : " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." 

" My hand, my life 's my king's alone, 
To prop and stay his rightful throne. 
My person's liberty is mine own, 
And from my heart can ne'er be torn." 

Denied civil, he has given perhaps an undue weight to personal, 
liberty. If party strife and love of ofifice for gain do not poison 
the very roots of liberty in America, the mingling of Anglo-Saxon 
ideas with the Teutonic and the bold, dashing spirit of the 
Irish, the French, the Slav, and the other people will produce a 
homogeneous whole under our flag not yet dreamed "of in the 
past. 

The idea, the simple conception, of liberty in its purest and 
truest sense is wholly exotic in Asia, and cannot for ages take 
growing root. It is to England alone that the East must look for 
the planting of the seed and watering the plant ; and if England 
be the nation — can she, will she — be permitted to do it? Where 
the English language goes there goes English literature. The 
A B C's — the primer of this literature — inculcates a love for, and 
ideas of, freedom. Its stories and romances ; its poetry and its 
oratory ; its laws and its philosophy ; its very songs sung at the 
cradle and at the banquet, all inculcate it. Where English rule 



TREATMENT OF NATIVES BY ENGLISHMEN. 279 

goes there goes material prosperity, or at least the material agencies 
for increasing material prosperity. With this goes schools and 
education ; schools and education beget a love of reading and the 
acquirement of knowledge. The road to preferment in India is 
through the English language. The result is, there is a greed 
among the Indian boys to study English, and a pride in showing it 
off. We never passed a group of school-boys with books in straps 
or knapsacks going to or from school that they did not say some- 
thing to us in our language, and generally ending their fun by 
shouting: " Hip! hip ! hurrah! " 

These boys are learning English for the purpose of getting 
lucrative employment ; but they are at the same time learning the 
difference between the fat mastiff with the collar-marks on his 
neck and the lean wolf who can sniff the free air on the mountain- 
side. This will prove dangerous unless properly guided. Men 
who read English and ponder over the grand thoughts written in 
it must become good citizens or dangerous slaves. Such slaves 
cannot tamely submit. This fact the ordinary Englishman shuts 
his eyes to. He cannot see it in Ireland, where it is written in 
huge characters. He cannot see it in India, where the govern- 
ment is affording every encouragement to material prosperity, and 
where the individual I3riton delights to treat the native as a slave, 
and takes pleasure in speaking of him as a " nigger." I do not 
mean that all Englishmen do this, but many do, and they leaven 
a mighty lump. There is something to me not only incongruous, 
but dangerous in slavery, in form or in name, where English rule 
goes. There exists the form, and it will sooner or later tell in 
India. 

Let me give some facts which will illustrate my thoughts. At a 
table d'hote in Calcutta one of a party of gentlemen opposite said 
to me : "You are a stranger here, I see." "Yes, but how did you 
know it? " " Because," he replied, " you sdiy please io that servant 
of your's, and thank him when he serves you. We never do that. 
They can't understand it." I laughed and told him we had in 
America a tradition that George Washington lifted his hat to a 
poor negro because he could not be outdone in politeness by a 
slave. He rejoined : " That will do in America, but not in India ; 
it would soon ruin the servants. They are a lot of niggers, and have 
to be treated as such." I told him these " niggers," as he called 
them, were learning something, and were already demanding a 
participation in the making of laws, and that the English ought to 
try to elevate rather than to repress them into a lot of slaves. 
The companions of this gentleman said nothing, but seemed to 
approve of what he said. Again : I visited a merchant's ofifice to 
inspect shawls, to be shown us by some Hindoo merchants. I 
bought a ring chudder, and, finding I had left my wallet in my 
room, told the native he could go with me to the hotel for the 
pay. The proprietor, an old resident, saw me to the door. I got 



28o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

into the carriage, inviting the native to take a seat by my side. 
This he was about to do, when my friend imperiously motioned 
him to mount with the driver, saying : " We never let those 
fellows ride with us." Now, this Hindoo was a man of elegant 
manners, clean, bright, and spoke good English. But it would 
not do for him to ride inside with a white man. It would spoil 
him and others. He had to be kept in his place. 

I saw a man in uniform at Delhi kick a coolie from the car simply 
because he had put the officer's package on, instead of under, the 
seat. The native took the kick without a murmur. I could 
name a dozen such illustrations, and from all over India. I did 
not once, except at Lord Dufferin's and at a powerful commis- 
sioner's, ever hear any thing asked for by an Englishman, or even 
ordered, in that tone which softens an order into a request. It 
was always an order, and of the most dictatorial kind, an order 
rarely used in old slave days in America, except on the cotton 
plantations. I was speaking in Ceylon with some resident Eng- 
lish of the beautiful little bullocks and the pretty carts, and of 
the ease with which they could be made ready, and expressed my 
surprise that I had not seen them used by the foreign residents. 
They all said that it was a pity that the foreigners could not use 
them, they were so cheap, convenient, and pretty; but they were 
used by the Singalese, and, therefore, it would not do for the gov- 
erning classes to be seen in them ; and yet the Singalese are a 
neat, graceful, cheerful, and very bright people. 

I did not while in India see a single instance of a free, friendly 
mingling of white and native people, except among the high-born 
natives and the rulers at grand entertainments. I saw no native 
and Englishman in what might be called a friendly and equal in- 
tercourse, and from what I could learn from the English residents 
themselves, there is no such thing as familiarity between them, 
and the majority say it is right ; that the natives are a conquered 
people, and should be treated as such. 

Others say it is necessary that it be so, because if familiarity be 
permitted it would breed a sort of contempt on the part of these 
people ; that for countless ages they have been the slaves of their 
superiors, and must be treated by all white men as they were 
formerly treated by their superiors, their masters; that the whites 
should assume and hold the position held in the past by the native 
nobility ; that to the native every well-bred Englishman must be 
a nobleman ; that to do otherwise would encourage hopes impos- 
sible of fruition, and thereby encourage mutiny. Others again 
say the natives will not permit familiarity ; that their religion 
teaches that a non-Hindoo is a thing unclean, to be avoided as 
much as possible; to be used, but never to be touched, or allowed 
to touch any thing used for food ; that if a foreigner drinks from 
a high-caste cup the cup is defiled ; that a native will meet a for- 
eigner in business, be polite and courteous, but never or rarely 



ENGLISH SERVILITY TO CASTE. 281' 

invites him to his house or meets him in any social manner. 
These latter acknowledge that the bullying manner of many Eng- 
lishmen is very unfortunate, but that it is the natural result of the 
nature of the Hindoo and the relations necessarily existing be- 
tween their conquerors and themselves. A very intelligent editor 
said : " I have met many of the most intelligent natives in Bom- 
bay. We are very friendly, but I believe that while they respect 
and fear, they hate us in their hearts." 

In no country in the world is more attention paid to caste than 
among the English colonies throughout the East ; not religious, 
as among the Hindoos, but social caste. No one engaged in re- 
tail business can enter the clique formed by the Hong, or whole- 
sale people. Officials enter it, but not the butcher and baker and 
candiestick-maker. These latter complain. A foreigner will not, 
if he can help it, ride in the same car with natives. I was told we 
must always take first-class railway carriages, because in them we 
would not meet the nasty Hindoos. If we went in a second-class, 
in every respect as comfortable as the first, some native would be 
with us. The objection urged was my reason for taking the lower 
grade. I thus often met intelligent Indians who gave me an 
insight into their characters and much information. But this 
silent avoidance of the people is not all. Over some second and 
third-class and intermediate cars on every train is written, not 
only in English but in Hindoostanee, or other dialect of the 
locality, " For Europeans only." One very intelligent man, who 
spoke English, somewhat stilted, but with an elegance and purity 
I could not equal, said this was an insult to the educated Hindoo. 
When the Viceroy made his vice-regal inspection of the various 
provinces just before our arrival, the cioors of the native houses 
in Delhi were ordered to be closed along which the deputy of the 
Empress passed in a sort of state promenade, and the natives were 
not allowed in the street, but had to watch the ceremony from be- 
hind their closed portals and from their windows, and that, too, 
while foreigners, none of whom resided on the particular street, 
were filling the same with perfect freedom. An educated Hindoo, 
speaking to us of this, said it was an insult which they would not 
soon forget. I mentioned these things to an intelligent English- 
man, and said : " The government as such is doing its part mag- 
nificently for this land ; it builds splendid roads, and is carrying 
the rail into every quarter of India ; it builds canals and irrigating 
ditches, but the English people, as individuals, are making a fearful 
mistake. These people should be taught to be good citizens, and 
to discard their old servility. It is no excuse that their old mas- 
ters treated them as slaves. England boasts no slave can tread 
on British soil. These people are nominally free, but you treat 
them as slaves, and no slave could be more servile and abject in 
manner than are these dusky men. These Indians have the same 
blood in them that courses through Caucasian veins. British 



'282 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

rule, from its constitution, must be a rule of freedom. In violat- 
ing such rule, you violate the very foundations of your bill of 
rights ; a free government must not only have the respect of the 
governed, but must have their love. Are you English people 
helping your government?" "Ah, you talk like an American 
democrat ! This is a conquered people, and must be governed as 
a conquered people. They know they prosper under our rule, and 
if Avar should break out between us and Russia, they will fight to 
drive the Russian back to his frozen north." 

The learned author of " The Light of Asia," with whom we had 
an hour's interview, and who, by the way, is one of the most brill- 
iant talkers I ever met, said my strictures were to some extent 
correct, but that no ill effect would come of these things. That 
a mere handful, a few thousands at best, would acquire English 
and become discontented, but that the vast millions of India were 
grateful to England for the material benefits conferred ; that they 
would sing and be content, or would plod and not think. That 
they would not object to the bullying of Englishmen as long as 
they got their little comforts. It may be so, but even that is sad. 
Burke, in his attack upon slavery in America, said : " Its worst 
feature was, that it taught the slave to love the chain that bound 
him." 

I like the Indians ; I love them in the broad sense. They are 
in many respects a charming people. They may be crafty and 
deceitful. Their masters now and for countless ages make and 
made them so. But they are poetical, polite, and caressing. The 
courtesy of the common man is oftentimes almost princely in its 
tone. They spring from the same stock with ourselves. I would 
like them made happy, not as mere animals, but as men, free and 
bold, and made so by the rule of the Anglo-Saxon. I do not want 
Russia to go one foot farther south in Asia than she has gone. 
But'England is not sowing seeds to bear fruits of love in Indian 
soil. She sends her people to govern, to fill their pockets, and 
then to return home to enjoy their accumulations. No English- 
man goes to India to make it his home and the home of his chil- 
dren. They decry amalgamation, and look down upon and speak 
of Eurasians, the descendants of mixed marriages, with a species 
of contempt. A very bright lady, educated, with the soft charm- 
ing voice so common among the mixed bloods, speaking of her 
husband's position, said he did tolerably well, but could not ad- 
vance. It was hard for a native-born to get a good place; that 
her husband was educated in England, but that the many needy 
Englishmen, with influence to back them, got the pick of every 
thing. I said I thought civil-service competition governed all 
such things. " Yes," she said, " in theory, but not in practice." 
I saw and regretted these things when in India, but I supposed 
that Russian sway was one of absolute despotism, crushing utterly 
the native, and shutting out entirely every ray of liberty. I 



ENGLAND GOOD COLONISTS. 283 

thought it better that the people of the East should remain 
as they were — steeped in ignorance and dark superstition — rather 
than to let in a little light, and that of a doubtful character, which 
would be more difificult to supplant by a better and purer light. 

The English are the best colonists the world has ever known. 
They are the worst amalgamationists or miscegenists. Theirs is 
a strong fibre, which cannot yield a particle in mingling with 
others ; which attracts and molds into itself all others, when not 
met by a too great mass. In which latter case it refuses absorp- 
tion, and dies from mere inanition, from lack of food. It cannot 
leaven a lump ; it demands to be and must be the lump. As 
colonists the English carry all the good of the mother country, but 
drop something of their overweening conservatism ; they catch 
from a new land a tint of newness and an idea and love of prog- 
ress. America and Australia, from what I hear, not only permit, 
but force, English ideas to grow and expand as they never could 
have done on British soil. The French and Spanish lack fibre, and 
soon become absorbed in the mass which surrounds them in their 
colonies. But England does not colonize India. Its people go 
not to stay, but to sojourn, to govern and to absorb the wealth of 
the land for after-life in England ; they squeeze to the uttermost 
limit possible, restrained only when they find danger of lessening 
the vitality of the squeezed so that it will yield nothing to their 
children. They recognize the vast value of India to the home 
race. They know that 120,000 to 200,000 Englishmen a year 
must live on Indian pabulum, and must, sooner or later, take 
home fat to keep bright the fireside of vast numbers. They 
recognize the fact that India really supports the English army ; 
that on its fields must be fed and drilled the soldiery to battle for 
the supremacy of the sea-girt isle, against whose chalk cliffs the 
jealousy of all Europe is ever beating in mighty and angry waves. 
They give to India every means of increasing material wealth, be- 
cause they and their children will take tithes of that wealth. 
They feed the sacred Hindoo cow because they know that they 
take and must have the cream of her milk. But they will not mix 
with the people; they are unwilling to mingle their blood with 
theirs, and when the blood does become mixed, they despise the 
amalgam. They say a child of pure English blood cannot grow 
to strong manhood in India. Therefore, while they remain to 
battle for money on its soil, they send their children home to be 
educated and to grow up with English prejudices and wrapped in 
English conservatism. Thus the English will not^ — they say can- 
not — go to India to stay ; will not — they say they cannot — 
anglicize the Hindoo. They say the Hindoos differ too widely 
from them ; that their religion necessarily keeps up this wide dif- 
ference; that they cannot and will not become English ; and that 
when there be an amalgamation, then the Eurasians lack stamina 
and are not fit for a governing class. Yet I saw one of the hugest 



284 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

ships commanded by a half-blood brought up in England, and 
with very influential relatives at home, and on a river steamer a 
stalwart Eurasian mate whose fist could strike a sledge-hammer 
blow. The English cannot see these things. 

The Indians in most parts of British India are a servile set. 
They never address an employer as " mister," but always as 
" master-." There was something painful to me in this abject 
servility, and I found a real relief in Jeypore and Hyderabad, 
both governed by native princes, where the natives looked me 
squarely in the face and seemed to feel they were men. They 
were respectful, but it was the respect shown by the em- 
ployed to the employer, and not the servility of slaves to a 
master. There are Eurasians in large numbers about Madras and 
in southern India. They have not been taught to feel that they 
belong to the governing classes. Their bearing, taught them by 
the home Englishmen, is not manly. They have been too much 
relegated to the homes and habits of their native mothers. 
Yet many of them have much of those characteristics which 
make the Creoles of Louisiana so attractive. There is no racial 
structure among the Indians to pi'event them making a first-class 
admixture with the English. Such admixture is not hybridization. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

CITIES BENEATH THE INDIAN OCEAN — THE RED SEA AND ITS 
SUGGESTIONS— SINGULAR WEATHER— SUEZ CANAL. 

P. and O. Steamship ''''Rome" Red Sea, March 26, 1888. 

We left Colombo the morning of the 15th. Our ship was large 
and comfortable, of 5,011 tonnage, 5,000 horse-power, and makes 
from 310 to 355 miles a day ; sails regularly between Sydney and 
London. We reached Aden, 2,093 miles, a little after midnight 
on the morning of the 22d, and will make Suez, another 1,308 
miles, on Monday morning, the 26th. We have, first and second 
class, from 180 to 200 passengers — quite a nice lot of people. 
The ladies dress for dinner, and some of the men. It is "good 
from," and there is no crime so great to the Briton as to be out of 
" form." Passengers are split into coteries. I have tried to mix 
in, but find it a hard job. You talk to a lady — she is sweet and 
amiable and seems really glad you speak to her ; but as soon as 
you get away she gets terribly alarmed lest she has made a mis- 
take and talked to the wrong fellow. 

We have a few swells : A young peer who is very quiet and 
gentlemanly. There is a "y> ne sais qiioi" about many of these 
men which is somehow or other almost offensive. A wild, brave 
fellow, who died fighting during our late war, told me that when 
abroad he constantly felt like whaling a live lord. When I asked 
if they were not gentlemanly, he replied that " they were, but 

that was what was the matter ; they were too gentlemanly ; 

that every gesture seemed to say: ' I am a gentleman, and to the 
purple born.' " We have a lady — daughter of an Irish peer. 
She is very bright. I repaid her for her politeness to me. On 
the 17th I saw there was not a person aboard who had on a piece 
of green. I determined there should be one at least to do honor 
to St. Patrick. Not being able to raise a piece of green ribbon, I 
put in my buttonhole a thin strip of pineapple leaf. A lady sit- 
ting next me at the table asked me how I could wear the green 
on an English ship, and seemed to think me guilty of a great dis- 
courtesy. I replied the Queen had done the same when she 
named one of her sons Patrick. It was a home thrust, but seeing 
many people looking at me askant, I pushed it, and soon had a 
lot of young Australians following my example. I was not sure 
their Hibernianism was not because it gave them a good excuse 

285 



286 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

for popping several champagne corks in honor of the green. 
After dinner " Lady C." saw my favor, and asked what it meant. 
The result was I pinned one on her. She confessed next morn- 
ing she had slept better for wearing her national color. 

The big gun of our company is the governor of Ceylon. He is 
here with his suite, consisting of his secretary and a yellow turn- 
spit dog. The governor is a thoroughly safe man. He will never 
set his island afire. Our passage has been a smooth one ; it is 
delightful to be upon the deck and escape the hot cabin. At 
night I have watched the southern hemisphere. It is so rich 
with fine stars. I cannot tire of looking at the true cross rising 
and chasing the false one in its short semi-circular track far down 
south. On the vast waste of the Indian Ocean I could speculate 
upon the mighty cities with their world of records of a high civili- 
zation lying beneath the blue waters ; cities which gave to Egypt, 
which never had a childhood, the tradition which afterward 
became the mine in which other peoples have delved for the 
wisdom which became the nucleus for their modern learning. 
Here, between India and Egypt, lies buried beneath the sea 
depths, the people who gave to the land of " Brahma " and the 
land of " Ra " the clear light, which, after a cataclysm had 
changed the face of the world, and buried the fountains of science 
and the home of learning, left traditions which were covered up 
under a mass of superstition and supernatural phantasms. 

Egypt's first day was its brightest. People cannot be great 
and learned except after ages of working up. Where did the 
Egyptians study? They left not a single footprint showing they 
ever struggled upward. Their first appearance was upon a pin- 
nacle, from which every succeeding period shows them descending. 
Not a single day of increasing light, not a moment of dawn. 
Where did they come from ? What became of the school in which 
they learned the knowledge which afterward became the secrets 
of the priestcraft, and enabled Moses to be the mighty lawgiver ? 

I wonder if others feel as I do when finding themselves in 
regions so mixed up with the misty past as the Red Sea. There 
has always been a sort of vague idea that there would be some 
things utterly different from things before seen. I look out upon 
the blue waste of waters spread around me, just rippled by a light 
wind, and ask myself, is it possible that there to my left lies 
Africa, stretching in mighty hot wastes for thousands of miles, and 
there to my right Arabia, the cradle of that strange people who 
were never a nation, and yet have overrun so many lands and 
have been the foundations of so many nations. I almost feel hurt 
with myself that I do not see something to show that this sea is 
different from other seas. 

We have had warm weather — I may say hot — but as yet 
nothing distressing until yesterday. After passing the Straits of 
Bab-el-Manded we had a strong wind behind us. For a few hours 
it was very hot, sultry, and humid, and felt as close as one expe- 



THOUGHTS ON THE RED SEA. 287 

riences in a hot room packed with people. I could almost fancy 
Pharaoh's hosts were sweating and festering around me. Before 
night the wind shifted, and the breeze caused by the motion of 
the ship was pleasant. The Red Sea has lost for me all its horrors. 
Aden is a striking-looking place — bold, wild, desolate rocks, from 
which there will not be very unpleasant change when one takes 
his trip into purgatory. A further shifting of the wind more 
from the northward made the evening almost cool. Then 
another turn, and we had a little attack never experienced else- 
where. The air became hazy, and before sundown the haze 
settled upon the ship like a dew — a salt dew, as salt as light sea 
spray. Breathing was almost a labor. The boatswain says he 
never saw this thing except on the Red Sea, and there only rarely. 
This queer weather did not prevent a ball coming off on Saturday 
evening being a success. It was planned before the Rome reached 
Colombo, where the passengers got up their toilets. Altogether 
it was a creditable thing and prepared the company for the rest 
which Sunday, the 25th, made necessary. We have some good 
musicians aboard, and nearly a hundred good voices mingled in 
praise of God here on the Red Sea. Jew and Christian on this 
sea could meet on a common ground, and the Mohammedan sail- 
ors, who were playing cards under the windows of the reading- 
room when the service was held, could too have joined in the 
anthem. For Moses founded the law in the mountain whose 
hoary head would be visible from where I write if the haze would 
but pass away, the law which is the foundation rock of their 
creeds. As the anthem swelled and rolled out over the waters, I 
could not help asking myself if the Mighty Ruler of all would 
utterly discard the " Allah il Allah " of the followers of Islam 
uttered on Friday, their holy day, or of the Jews Avho bent in 
solemn reverence on yesterday, their Sabbath, and would only 
hearken to those who are worshipping to-day ? God is not only 
a great God, but must be a good God. Has He written His laws 
in such characters that these people, all of them earnest and sin- 
cere, could honestly draw from them such different lessons and 
be punished for all eternity because of such honest difference of 
opinion? Or does not the Mighty One listen to the earnest 
appeal of the Jew who prays to Him directly without the aid of 
any mediators, and to the honest supplication of the Moham- 
medan who asks the mediation of his prophet, or the Christian 
who rests upon the promises of the Saviour ? 

When we reached Suez we found, much to our satisfaction, that 
the company had made arrangements thereafter to land their pas- 
sengers at Ismalia. This gave us an opportunity to pass through 
half of the great canal, and thus to acquire an acquaintance with 
De Lesseps' great triumph. 

Mere reading cannot fully enable a man to comprehend the 
vast benefits springing out of the Suez ditch. But when one sees 
the mighty ships lying in Chinese and Indian harbors, and meets 



288 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

them on the Indian Ocean and on the Red Sea by the dozen, then 
the value of this great artery comes home to the understanding. 
The Red Sea, only a few years ago, was almost as little known to 
the world as the Arctic Ocean, but now its waters are ploughed 
daily by ships of all kinds. Steamers of 6,500 tons are now ply- 
ing between London and Australia. We entered the mouth of 
the canal at three o'clock, and met three large steamers just coming 
out, and before reaching Ismalia, less than 50 miles off, seven more. 

Our forefathers turned their faces against public improvements 
being done by government. Their policy grew out of State 
jealousy. Politicians — call them statesmen if you will — feared that 
certain States would get more than their share of public works, 
and all dreading lest the building such works would tend to cen- 
tralize power. But times change, and aggregated man called 
nations, as well as individual men, change with them. Public 
works, for the benefit of the whole nation commercially, are as 
much within the constitutional power of our nation as are forti- 
fications or armed ships for the protection of our seaboard. 
The doctrine of strict construction is a good one, and was espe- 
cially so when statesmen were fighting against monarchical ten- 
dencies, but it has been the too fruitful source of a vast amount 
of humbug and ignorant charlatanism. 

Government should have built years ago a canal between Lake 
Michigan and the Mississippi, but our solons at Washington 
said it was all within a single State, and therefore not national. 
That is a national work which benefits the American people and 
is kept within the nation's control, whether it be within one State 
or within a dozen. A railroad spanning the continent benefits 
the whole people, but when it is controlled by a corporation it is 
a private affair. The Portland Canal was only three miles long, 
and all within one Kentucky county, but it was for the use of 
those who used the 12,000 miles of navigable waters of the Mis- 
sissippi, and was national. The test of nationality should be 
whether it benefits the whole people or a few, and not whether 
' it be located in one State or in many, and whether it be controlled 
by a few or by the people. 

We generally form our notions of an unseen thing by our 
ideas of its importance. We were greatly surprised by the insig- 
nificant appearance of the Suez Canal. It had the appearance of 
a ditch, rather than a mighty artery for the world's trade. Our 
great ship almost filled it from side to side, and ploughed the 
mud from its bottom with her huge screws, and washed its 
banks with her swell. Even the wide sidings, where we had 
to await other ships on meeting, were so narrow that the ves- 
sels almost touched. The prism has greatly changed, and 
dredging is constantly necessary. It was a queer sight, the 
trains of camels squatted along the bank to be loaded with the 
silt taken from the bed, and then climbing the steep bank to 
drop their sandy loads on the desert at the side. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

AN APRIL TRIP UP THE NILE— DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE— CAIRO OLD 

AND NEW— ARABIC TOMBS— GOOD-FRIDAY— BOOLAK MUSEUM 

—MOTHER AND BABE 3,000 YEARS OLD. 

Luxor {Thebes), Egypt, April g, 1888. 

ThirtY-SIX years ago, the latter part of March, I sailed from 
Naples to Egypt. Friends tried to dissuade me from going so 
late in the season. They spoke of the plague and other Egyp- 
tian dangers, and bade me adieu with moist eyes, and my good 
mother, when she learned in our Kentucky home what I had 
attempted, prayed to God to preserve her child, even as He had 
preserved His chosen children centuries before. I got through 
Cairo then without any discomfort. This year I came again, simply 
to look once more at old Cheops, and to see the shadows of 40 cen- 
turies clustering about his hoary brow, and to enable the boys to 
get a peep at this storied land. We had no expectation what- 
ever of ascending the Nile, and learning from travellers whom 
we met at Ismalia on landing, that the weather had been intensely 
hot for some few days past at Cairo, we feared we would even 
have to hurry away from that city. They told us that the fleas, 
flies, heat, and mosquitos were simply intolerable ; that everyone 
was trying to get away. The wind, however, changed that very 
day. We were really cold on the cars, at night, and on arriving 
at Cairo found the hotels crowded, and Shepherd's hostelry had 
the appearance of a gay watering-place. 

Knowing I would have to see Karnak and Thebes now or 
never, and trusting to my recollections of the khamsene winds, 
that a few days of hot blows were apt to be followed by a week 
or two, and probably more, of cool breezes, I determined to risk 
a trip up the Nile to -the First Cataract. Owing to the troubles 
in Nubia, tourists have generally stopped at that point throughout 
this season. We found that we could take rail to Assiout, and 
thence on the Post steamers, two a week, could go to Assouan, 
taking four days for the up trip, stopping at the different places 
of interest long enough to see them, and remaining at the last 
place nearly two days ; then, by quitting the down boat at Luxor, 
we would have four full days for the grandest of Egyptian ruins 
before the next boat would descend. 

We have carried out so far the above programme. We have 
had simply delicious weather, hot, it is true, at mid-day in the 

289 



290 A RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

sun, but with a steady breeze from the north all the time, and 
the nights so cool that we have slept under blankets. We were 
told the river was falling so rapidly that we would most probably 
have much time to study the formation of sandbars. We have 
bumped a dozen times, but have not been at all delayed. We are 
now told we were lucky. What is luck? She is the hand-maiden 
of every man at one time or other, and in one form or another. 
She is ever by one's side, ready to give help. The blind do not 
see her, the timid or irresolute decline to take her outstretched 
hand. The unlucky man is the man who neglects to strike when 
the iron is hot. The lucky man is the one who takes advantage 
of proffered fortune. Circumstances, it is to be confessed, throw 
more of such proffers in the way of one than another. But if 
one will follow the footprints of the hicky men of the world, 
one will find at the points, where these seized fortune at the 
flood, tracks of many faltering and hesitating ones near by, any 
one of whom had within reach the same opportunities as the 
fortunate ones had. 

I am writing at "Cook's Luxor Hotel," as good a house as we 
could wish. A large rambling building in a fine garden running 
down to the river. It is embowered in noble palms and flow- 
ering trees and shrubs, and would be a charming retreat any- 
where, but here, contrasted with the hot mud-hovels which make 
up an Egyptian village, with the burning sands and sterile moun- 
tains close by, it is simply delightful. We are the only occupants ; 
have the whole house, do what we please, and shall leave it with 
regret. Invalids in search of health could spend a month or two 
here, not only delightfully, but in this wondrous dry atmosphere 
most advantageously in many classes of complaints. I need 
state only three facts to show the rapidity of evaporation in 
Upper Egypt. Water, too warm to drink, is put into a porous 
jar- and placed in the wind, though in the sun ; an hour after it 
is as cool as fair spring water. At night, exposed to a breeze, 
even when the breeze is rather warm, before morning it becomes 
almost ice-cold. The night of our arrival here I took a pouring 
bath on a balcony. The wind was balmy but fresh. The rapid 
evaporation so chilled me that I could not stay long enough for 
a good bath. At the foot of the cataract we took a swim in the 
Nile. We wore our underclothes for bathing-suits. We hung 
them up before our state-rooms, and in ten minutes they were 
dry enough to be worn. We have all heard of the habit of all 
Africans to anoint themselves with oil, and travellers speak of it 
as nasty. It is, however, necessary in very hot and very dry 
climates to prevent the cracking of the skin. An English oflficer 
told me that during the hot winds on the upper Nile his hands 
and face chapped worse than they ever did in a cold climate — 
chapped to bleeding badly. I have found fresh white butter 
quite as pleasant on my hands as on my toast. 



EGYPTIAN FLIES. _ 291 

At Assouan we were in the sun during two days. We did not 
use our umbrellas, our pith hats being quite comfortable, and yet 
we were just on the edge" of the tropics. It has been rather too 
chilly to lie down on the top of our little steamer for any consid- 
erable time at night. We have had no mosquito curtains, and 
have needed none, the breeze on the water making them unneces- 
sary. It takes a hard blow, however, to keep flies away. The 
pertinacity of an Egyptian fly is beyond that of any other living 
creature. The natives never brush them away. They deem it 
bad luck to do so. Flies are never driven from a baby's face, and 
it does not seem annoyed by them. Its face is rarely washed, and 
is so dirty that it affords admirable forage ground for hundreds of 
the little brutes. I watched a child of two and a half years old 
enjoying a crust of bread. There was about it a swarm of 
flies, and I do not exaggerate when I say dozens were on its 
face at one time, and in patches as large as a half dollar about 
the eyes and mouth. It would screw up its eyes when they 
threatened to go in. I thought some must have gone into its 
mouth with the bread. It did not seem at all annoyed. We 
have seen sleeping children on the streets whose faces were al- 
most black with the insects. They smiled as if angels were 
whispering in their ears. I have seen men talking pleasantly to- 
gether while a dozen flies would be promenading about their 
faces apparently unnoticed. I asked a man how he could stand 
it. " Mashallah ! They don't bother me," was his reply. This 
has made the fly bold, and he seems utterly unable to understand 
what a foreigner means when he tries to drive him oiT. He has, 
too, remarkably prehensile claws, and keeps them keen and sharp 
when taking constitutional walks over European countenances. 
It was probably the knowledge of this quality which made these 
people pronounce it bad luck to drive them away. They found 
it best to educate the masses to bear the infliction, and so get used 
to it. 

Nearly all the religious and semi-religious prohibitions and 
usages of the peoples of the world probably had their origin in 
some material benefit. The cow was hard to rear in India. She 
was most necessary — so the wise priesthood made her sacred, 
and thus preserved her. Hog's flesh was subject to diseases in 
Egypt and Syria, so the hog was made religiously unclean, and be- 
came infested with devils. Pigeons and certain other birds fur- 
nish the best of manure, so they were made semi-sacred to insure 
them in great numbers. Uncleanliness breeds disease, so the 
priestcraft pronounced certain rivers and pools cleansing to the 
soul, and thus insured at least a cleansing of the body. Taxes 
were always obnoxious to men. Gifts to the gods to insure eter- 
nal welfare, however, were ever freely given. So priestly rulers 
kept their exchequers full through the offerings upon the altars, 
which were insured by the fears of unseen and unknowable dangers. 



292 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Moses would have had a hard time making both ends meet with- 
out the gifts to the Lord. Travellers are shocked by the inces- 
sant demand for backshish (gifts) throughout the mighty East. 
The thing is not to be wondered at, for of all the beggars the 
world ever knew, there are none equal to the gods of the Orient. 
Their hands are everywhere represented extended. Their favor 
was won by offerings ; their anger averted by sacrifices. Like the 
proboscis of a celebrated elephant, their hands could pick up a 
pin, or carry off a cart-load of good things. They could make a 
lunch from a few grains of rice, the widow's mite, or they could 
devour a hecatomb of bullocks, the gifts of a prince. The gods 
took gifts and demanded them. The great and powerful, profit- 
ing by their example, took gifts and enforced the giving. The 
poor took gifts and begged for them. The well-to-do, in the 
whole region of the early sun, reach out the hand for commis- 
sions. The poor clamor like hungry curs for crumbs and bones, 
and are not ashamed of their clamor. 

I fear what I have said about Upper Egypt looks too much as 
if I was seeing it through rose-colored glasses. When Bayard 
Taylor and I travelled in the East together I suffered terribly 
from fleas. The only pun I remember him to have made was 
anent this little torment. He said Homer wrote the " Iliad," 
Virgil the " .^neid " ; that if ever I wrote an epic it would be the 
" Flead." I had hoped that now we were about to escape this 
Egyptian plague, but after lunching in one of the tombs of the 
kings we lay down for a nap on the sands ; my donkey-boy, de- 
siring to please the old man, whom he flatters by calling him 
" father," spread the blanket and saddle for me to have a nice 
siesta. Ah ! moment of sad forgetfulness. I slept an hour, but 
the Nemesis came. This particular tomb is now called the 
"lunch tomb." Hundreds have lunched in it this season, and 
though it is where no living thing is seen, and apparently nothing 
can live, yet the sanded floor was full of my mortal enemies, 
brought to it by the many donkey-boys who in its shade rest 
while their employers are wandering among the mighty caves of 
the dead. I have passed a good part of my time since then, as 
a hen with one chick does in an empty chicken-yard — scratching. 
I am like certain officials not far from the old court-house in 
Chicago — only more so. They have itching palms. I am all 
palm. I itch all over, and am raw in big patches. 

This is Sunday, the 15th. I will resume my writing. We are 
in Cairo ; got back Thursday night, having been just two weeks 
going over the ground, which in olden time was done on a 
" dahabeyah " (sailing-boat) in from seven to ten weeks. We have 
not had the easy, restful life — a sort of dolce far niente — enjoyed 
by the old dahabeyah voyageurs, but we have seen nearly all they 
saw, and have seen some things better than they could. We 
made 230 miles by rail, passing among the farms, observing the 



THE DONKEY AND HIS MASTER. 293 

modes of farm life, and have passed through the scene twice. 
From the roof of our Httle steamboat we could look over the high 
banks better than from a low sail-boat, and have, therefore, seen 
the shore lands better. We have seen the mighty ruins ; have 
seen them hastily, it is true, but in these days of Egpytology it 
is waste of time for each traveller to attempt to study the ruins in 
situ. He can see them, and then read them up intelligently 
afterward if his taste lead him to it. We have seen all of these 
things ; have seen the valley of the Nile from Cairo to Philae 
above the First Cataract, 588 miles, and are still having pleasant 
"weather; indeed, to-day it is rather too cool to go out without 
one's vest. And now I shall attempt to tell you somewhat of 
our trip, beginning at Ismalia, on Lake Timsah, on the Suez 
Canal, and thence 80 odd miles to Cairo. We made this by night 
and early morning. The moon being full, we saw almost as well 
in the clear night as by day. The first 20 miles was almost desert, 
but soon the country showed more of life, and at early daybreak 
we were looking over fields green in wheat and other crops ; and 
beautiful fields they were. The wheat, as in all Lower Egypt, had 
a fine stand, the ground well covered, but with heads not over an 
inch and a half in length. The farmers were out with the light, 
much of the labor being done in the cool of the morning. Men 
were lifting water by the " shadoof " — the pole and bucket — and 
by the "sakeeyeh." This latter is a vertical wheel, with buckets 
attached to a long, endless rope, which goes down into the well, 
and is worked by an ox or camel, who turns a horizontal wheel 
geared into the vertical wheel. It is here and there seen in Lower 
Egypt. Its true home, however, is in the upper land. It is 
never greased, and can be heard for a mile wheezing and groaning. 
Upon its model, some think, the music of the Egyptians is 
founded. In some localities these wheels go day and night, year 
in and year out, the men and beasts working by relays, and when 
heard from a tied-up boat in the small hours of the night sounds 
very melancholy. Men were seen mounted upon donkeys, them- 
selves or the loads on which they rode nearly covering the patient 
little brutes. 

There are few roads in this land, and the paths followed in the 
fields are frequently the little dikes between fields. On these 
narrow treads the donkey was pacing along, his rider's feet 
dangling down almost to the ground. Few things strike the 
western man as being more droll on his arrival here than a 
solemn-looking, turbaned man, in long, flowing garments, mounted 
upon a little donkey three feet high. They look solemn "alike, 
and so dove-tailed together that one soon comes to feel they were 
fashioned on the same day, the one for the other. They are 
wonderfully intimate, and seem to understand each other per- 
fectly. The native Egyptians are rather cowardly. They quarrel 
and vociferate fearfully, but one never sees a good bloody nose 



294 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

growing out of any squabble. But word-fighting does not satisfy 
the human heart. Here the donkey comes into full play. He 
has a part of his anatomy always convenient for his master to 
empty his wrath upon, and when a wordy war ends the solemn 
brute takes the cudgel as his part of the fray. Like a boy, he has 
a feature made for the rod, and finding his master angry, at once 
turns this part to the stroke. 

On arriving at Cairo we drove at once to Shepherd's hotel. 
I thought it the same I had stayed in thirty-six years ago. I had 
this idea from persons telling me it was the only hotel here at 
that time. The name, however, did not sound familiar. The 
landlord, to whom I mentioned my desire to stay in the same 
house, and that his did not look right to me, explained that many 
changes had been made. After breakfast we sallied out. There 
was around me a beautiful city — tall houses and wide streets, 
beautiful gardens and squares, flowers and trees, victorias and 
landaus. Nothing seemed familiar until we were besieged by a 
lot of donkey-boys. I almost fancied I saw the same little animal 
which long ago carried me so bravely over the hot sands to the 
pyramids ; I went up to him and called him " Saladin," and ca- 
ressed his ears. He did not smile nor look particularly pleased, 
but he did not resent my familiarity. We proposed a ride, and 
when I said I would ride " Saladin," his owner said that was not 
his name, but " Mary Anderson " was. I insisted that he was 
wrong, that I had ridden that donkey before he (the boy) was 
born, aye, when his father was a boy. I asked him if his father 
was not named " Mohammed." He said : " Oh, effendi, you are 
right ! " I asked if his father was not, when young, a donkey- 
boy ; " In shallah ! he was." I then asked if that particular don- 
key had not belonged to his father, and if he was not 40 years 
old. He admitted he was. I am glad I did not fix the brute's 
age .at 4,000 years, for that boy would have agreed with any thing 
I said. He was fascinated. When I got up he grinned to an- 
other boy, and, pointing at me, touched his head to indicate I 
was daft. I was in the Cairo of old on that donkey's back, but 
that was all that made it familiar. 

We rode through the bazaars, narrow little streets nearly covered 
overhead, with turbaned merchants sitting in their little stores 
surrounded by their wealth. We passed a funeral procession — a 
couple of dozen women howling their wail for the dead ; we met 
a marriage procession, with a closed palanquin on two long poles 
borne by two camels, one before and one behind, followed by 
gay people singing in joy, and with drums beating like mad. We 
stopped to see the two processions meet. The drums of the one 
beat and the gay ones laughed and sang, while the mourners of 
the others shrieked their sorrow. Both were shams, mere farms. 
There was no real joy in the one nor grief in the other. Both 
were mere pageants, and the actors were paid for the parts they 



THE PYRAMIDS AND AN OLD MEMORY 295 

played. I do not know that we should be shocked at such things. 
I have seen the same in lands claiming a higher civilization. The 
performers there, however, were paying a debt to fashion and 
form, here they were earning bread. 

We rode out toward the tombs of the Mamelukes, passing 
through narrow lanes with long rows of nearly dead walls, doors 
now and then cutting through them. Men, women, and children 
were squatting up against the walls festering in the sun. Flies 
were swarming about them, and gathered in knots around the 
children's eyes, and all, old and young, held out their hands and 
asked for " backshish." This was the Cairo of 1852. But, then, 
there was one thing lacking — our little steeds were not compelled 
to pick their way among sleeping pariah dogs, and there were no 
troops of them about the tombs. The foreigners have done at 
least this good by their " occupation." They have had nearly all 
of these brutes killed off, and the streets are cleaned by regular 
scavengers. There are 30,000 foreigners in Cairo, and it is really 
governed by the English. The English dread cholera, and have 
made this city, with its 500,000 Asiatics and Africans, nearly as 
clean as any European capital. 

We drove in the afternoon to the pyramids in a victoria, over 
a beautiful road shaded by a double line of fine trees. Old Cheops 
did not look natural. He seemed small from this avenue of civi- 
lization. Years ago I waded to him through deep sands. The 
hot sun burned into my brain, and I wore a green veil to protect 
my eyes from the glare and the driving sands. Now green fields 
run nearly up to Geezah. Said and Ismail Pashas have left 
Egypt covered with debt, but they did much to improve the 
material of the land. As we drove up, the two pyramids lacked 
hugeness, but before I reached the top of Cheops, though with 
two stalwart Arabs to lift me up the rocky steeps, I reached the 
conclusion that they were mighty mountains of stone, and that 
over 210 pounds of solid flesh were a heavy load to carry up to 
the summit where 40 odd centuries sit enthroned. I looked in 
vain for two sets of initials coupled in brackets, which I cut in 
the cold stone 36 years ago. They are lost among masses of 
others. It is well. She is fat, and nearly 60 ; I am fat, and over 
60. One flame burned out another's burning. She did not even 
wait to learn from me if I fulfilled my promise to grave our names 
upon the pyramid's highest stone. I wonder if, in these 36 years, 
she has ever thought of that promise made under the softest of 
skies, and which one of us thought could never be forgotten ? 
What a boon it is to man that his heart is made of malleable 
material rather than of adamantine and brittle steel ! 

By the way, sensible men justly inveigh the habit of 
" vanity " in carving its name upon monuments and thereby 
defacing them. But there is sense in cutting one's name upon 
imperishable rock without defacing it. Some may come after- 



296 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

ward, and, seeing it, feel as if meeting an old friend. My heart 
was warmed up here in Egypt when seeing the names of some 
old acquaintance now dead. I felt we were living over again a 
half-forgotten past. I saw " Jenny Lind's " name upon the pyra- 
mid. Did she have it cut, or did some of her lovers do it ? I do 
not know. But for a moment there came from the West, over the 
dead desert, a trill of perfected harmony which I never heard but 
once, and will never hear again until an angel song shall come to 
my ear from white-robed ones hovering around the throne of the 
Eternal. I can almost fancy that Bayard Taylor had the name 
cut. I have a vague recollection of his telling me of it. He 
almost worshipped the Swedish Nightingale. 

We watched the sun sink beneath the western sands on his tire- 
less voyage around the world. We were glad our path did not 
carry us across those bleak sands. We have not abandoned our 
race, but we have much to see before we can gird our loins for the 
home-stretch. My old legs enabled me to descend Cheops' ribbed 
sides quite rapidly, so as to look upon the Sphinx as the shades of 
evening should gather around it. I wished the boys to see it first 
when the broad glare of day should not too much reveal its de- 
facement. A garrulous fellah said his name was " Mark Twain," 
and that for a shilling he would mount and descend old Cheops in 
eight minutes. With watch in hand I promised the shilling. 
How he did climb ! How his nimble, half-naked legs did spring 
up the huge steps ! He gained his shilling, and had a half minute 
to spare. 

We loitered about until the full moon came up from the east. 
One should see the woman-faced monument first by moonlight. 
Then there is one point from which it can be seen, when it is not 
all fancy and sentiment which can pronounce it the calmest and 
most dignified monument of the world. We were fortunate in 
being here during the full moon. There is a quiet grandeur, too, 
about the pyramids by moonlight which one cannot conceive who 
sees them only in the broad glare of sunlight. We walked around 
them so as to see them in deep shade, and then again in silvery 
light. I think the boys will remember it as long as they live. 
The next day we visited the citadel and the gorgeous mosque of 
Mehemet Ali. It is the resting-place of a great man. He was 
one of the men of the century. The exquisite alabaster walls and 
pillars, with the pure grain and forms of the translucent stone fad- 
ing and dimming into opaque marble, well befit the tomb of a man 
whose clear and transparent intellect faded and clouded before he 
died. Near by we visited the Arabic cemetery and the tombs of 
the khedives. The next day was to be Good-Friday — one of the 
Moslem's holiest days. Thousands wended their way to the tombs 
to spend the night among their loved dead ; the rich in carriages, 
with servants bearing their food and gifts for the destitute, — the 
poor on carts, on donkeys, or a-f oot, with their loads oh their heads. 




RAMESSES II., NINETEENTH DYNASTY, KNOWN AS SESOSTRI: 



BOOLAK MUSEUM. A MOTHER AND BABE. 297 

An Arabian tomb is a sort of house, more or less luxurious, ac- 
cording to the family means. There are halls and rooms, or open 
courts. Mourners spend the night and part of Good-Friday in 
religious exercises, and distribute gifts and food to the poor and 
destitute. Many a lean devil gets then the only square meal of 
his year. It was a queer sight, — the motley crowd. There were 
rich ladies veiled, showing only their dark eyes and a little white 
complexion — others veiled, too, but revealing the glimpse of a 
face of almost ebon blackness. There were poor women with 
faces only half covered, and fellaheen women with uncovered 
countenances. There were rich men preceded by out-runners, 
and poor men on donkeys and afoot. The alleys through the 
tombs are only a few feet wide. This motley crowd met and jos- 
tled against each other, all intent upon their pious duties. The 
old Coptic church, with subterranean chapel of Lady Mary, in old 
Cairo, aroused in our hearts sentiments which our doubts as to the 
truth of its tradition could not efface. Here for centuries the 
Copts have knelt in holy fervor, for in the two niches in the chapel 
wall they believe the Virgin Mary and her child with Joseph 
rested after the flight to Egypt. There may be, and probably is, 
no real foundation for the legend. But the belief and sentiment 
of centuries have consecrated the place. To have sat upon one 
of these marble slabs would have seemed to me a desecration. 

On our return drive, through an open square abutting upon the 
Esbekeeyeh garden, I casually glanced at the Hotel d' Orient. 
" Eureka! " I cried ; " there is my old hotel of 1852." I felt cer- 
tain of the recognition. I alighted, and was told that, though 
much enlarged, a part of the house is the same it was nearly 40 
years ago. I resolved to rest at it on our return from up the Nile. 
And now I am writing, I think, in one of three rooms in which 
Bayard Taylor and I first met. It may be fancy, but there 
is pleasure in the thought. We find the Oriental a much bet- 
ter house than Shepherd's ; charges reasonable, and no disposi- 
tion to stick the traveller for every crust taken extra. The rooms 
are good, and the attendance polite, and the table satisfactory. 
Fashion has made " Shepherd's " extortionate and presumptuous. 
We had there poor rooms and nasty smells and an impolite clerk. 
I commend to Americans the old Orient. It is charmingly 
situated. 

Since our return we have been busy seeing things. We spent 
a day in the Boolak Museum most advantageously. In it the 
student could profitably spend weeks. We saw the mummies of 
mighty monarchs who ruled nearly 4,000 years ago, and monu- 
ments of others who have been dead 5,000 years. One queen, 
who died over 3,000 years ago, was covered with garlands of 
flowers, some of which were enough preserved to show their 
petals and to enable us to recognize the flower. In one box was 
a queen and her little babe. They have not been unrolled from 



298 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the linen in which they were wrapped over 3,000 years ago. I al- 
most hoped that it was a sense of propriety which had saved the 
mother and child from the desecration of such exposure to the 
gaze of the curious. I wondered if she had lived to look upon her 
little one. If her maternal heart had heard that sweetest of all 
sounds to a woman's ear — her babe's first faint cry. Had it been 
laid upon her warm breast ? Had she felt its tiny hands upon her 
cheek or dimpling her soft bosom ? Had she uttered that softest 
and gentlest of all expressions — those two little words which con- 
vey a world of yearning and of love when a mother first says to 
her newly-born—" My baby ! " The linen enfolding her was 
clean and almost white. Her baby lay upon her feet. For 3,000 
years mother and child have thus rested. Are the woman and 
child yet mother and babe in the far-off spirit land? There 
is another mother and babe in a distant grave — mother and babe 
becoming one in dust, as they were one before it was born. If 
human hands could but lift the veil which hides the inscrutable ! 
If human eyes could but pierce the measures of the unfathomable ! 
If human ears could but catch the tones uttered beyond illimitable 
space ! Oh, if these things could but happen, what joy might sink 
into the soul of the living. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE NILE— OLD AND NEW EGYPT— EGYPTIAN HOUSES— THE 

PLODDING DONKEY— FORBIDDEN FRUIT— EGYPTIAN 

FARMS— HEADERS FROM AN ASS. 

Cairo, Egypt, April i6, 1888. 

On the 30th of March we took the train for Assyout, 250 miles 
up the Nile, but only 200 by rail. The valley of the Nile, after 
quitting the delta, is rarely over ten miles wide, and is frequently 
much narrower. It is a depression in the mighty desert, which 
stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, a distance of over 
3,000 miles. Probably in some mighty cataclysm attending the 
cooling of the earth's crust this great valley, 1,800 miles long, 
dropped down, leaving the desert above on either side. The 
valley at the " Fayoom," some 50 miles above Cairo, widens to 
15 and 40 miles, and spreads out in a great triangle at the delta, 
with a wide plat of cultivable lands 80 or more miles across at 
the widest point — from east to west. The entire area of culti- 
vable fields of this wonderful country is only 8,000 square miles, 
or about one seventh of the State of Illinois. This small tract 
has been called the granary of the world. A part of the valley 
grows one good crop from the moisture left by the inundation, 
which begins in July and ends in October ; other parts which can 
grow nothing without irrigation in Lower Egypt, grow three, 
and in Upper Egypt, two crops a year. A great part of the 
inundated lands is sown immediately after the Nile's retirement, 
and then, after being harvested, a second crop is put in and 
ripened before the next. The river, when within its banks, is 
called the Low, or Little Nile ; when full it is " The Nile.'' Large 
canals debouch into it frequently, and carry its waters far back. 
One of these begins at Assyout, and extends, with another name, 
nearly 300 miles northward, with a lateral branch some 30 miles, 
into the Fayoom. Another runs from Cairo to Ismalia and on 
to Suez. These are all in parts navigable, but were built and 
are used principally for irrigating purposes. The main ones are 
full at all times. The others are perfectly dry except during 
high Nile. From the river, from the canals, and from wells, 
water for irrigation is taken. One feature of the country is that 
•water is found everywhere in wells at a depth of but a little, 
if at all, lower than the surface of the river. The " shadoof" is 

299 



300 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the old-fashioned pole with a weight at the large end ; generally 
this weight is a mass of hard clay. The pole is a short one, lifting 
eight to twelve feet. As the river falls an additional shadoof is 
put in, then another. At this season, on the the Upper Nile, 
there are three or four sets. The first one is worked by one man, 
lifting the water in a closely-woven wicker or skin basket, four to 
six feet, into a trench. This runs along or into the bank to the 
next shadoof, commonly worked by two men with a pair of 
poles, lifting eight or ten feet, and so on till the level of the land 
is reached. Then the trenches lead back as far as required — 
sometimes a mile or more. The " sakeeyeh " makes the lift at 
once, the endless rope with buckets attached (described in my 
last) being lengthened as the water falls. I have seen a wheel 
in Upper Egypt lifting fully 50 feet. The flow into the wells is 
large. I saw one ten feet in diameter, from which water was 
being lifted by two large wheels at once, without lowering the 
well surface. In Lower Egypt, particularly throughout the delta, 
the level of the land is but little above the river, and there the 
shadoof is rarely seen worked in sets, and the wheels have fre- 
quently the buckets attached to, or directly in, the rims of the 
wheel. The depression of the valley of the Nile leaves a line 
of hills or low mountains, running in a more or less broken 
range on either side of the river, now quite close on one side, 
and six or eight miles back on the other. Then, again, the river 
seems nearly equally distant from the two ranges. The stream 
shifts its bed more or less from year to year, and in the course 
of centuries changes from near the hills on one side to those 
on the other. Cities, or rather ruins of cities, known in ancient 
times to have been on the river, are now miles back, and the 
cutting into the banks by the stream reveals foundations of other 
cities long buried, and frequently entirely forgotten. 

The hills, or rather the desert cliffs, vary in height, from 200 
or 300 feet in Lower Egypt, to 600 or 800 in Upper. I thought 
some, which are rather bold mountains, were over 1,000 feet 
high. These are all absolutely barren and desolate rocky bar- 
riers, now sloping towards the valley in steep inclines, then in 
abrupt frowning precipices. In the latter, however, the falling 
debris, through the ages, have left sloping inclines of pure sand, 
more or less high up from the level land. The rocks compos- 
ing these mountains or hills are, for over 300 (perhaps 400) miles 
above Cairo, a species of limestone, containing pebbles and cob- 
bles of rounded flintstone ; then on to the First Cataract they 
are mostly a gray or yellow-gray sandstone ; at Assouan, a red 
granite or syenite. (This name originates in the ancient city of 
Syene, built about the First Cataract.) This stone has there burst 
through the sandstone overlying. Looking from the valleys, one 
would think the mountains were in a succession of ranges, one- 
behind the other, whereas in fact the desert runs back, rather on 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IDENTICAL. 301 

a level with what appears to be the top of the range — runs back, 
not as a flat of table-land, but unevenly undulating, and fre- 
quently quite broken. From what I saw from the tops of the 
heights we climbed, and what I could gather from others, there 
is very little of the desert which approaches a flat table-land. It 
is all in hollows and hillocks, and rolls often quite ruggedly. It 
was news to me, and probably will be to others, that the oasis 
of the deserts are depressions, as is the Nile Valley — depressions 
in some cases, probably in all, even to a lower level than that of 
the Nile Valley. In some of them, when a well is dug, the water 
bubbles up and runs over the brim, giving irrigation without a 
lift. Whence is the source of these springs in the desert? I 
find there are occasional rains in those parts which margin the 
valley, and some of them quite heavy, for they leave deep 
water-worn marks in the torrent-beds running down the gorges. 
I suspect the rains extend over a large part of the Sahara and 
Arabian deserts. They sink into the sands, and enough remain 
unevaporated below for the supply of the few springs existing, 
and for the wells along the Nile Valley. These wells, by the 
way, lie principally back from the river and near the hills. 

Our run by rail to Assyout and back gave us a fine opportunity 
for seeing many farming operations which river travel does not 
afford, and our subsequent examinations of the picture-carving 
upon the walls of the tombs at Luxor and other places showed 
us how little of change in the domestic and economic life of the 
people, thousands of years have brought. The same wooden 
plow, with its single handle, its simple share, and its manner of 
attachment to the ox by a straight yoke without bows, is seen in 
the sculptured chambers of the dead of 30 odd centuries ago, and 
in the fields of the Fellaheen to-day. The working Arab, indeed 
the whole country and village peasantry, is called " Fellaheen," or 
" Fellahs," in contradistinction to the " Bedaween," or wandering 
Arabs, of the desert. The same intimacy exists between the 
peasantry and the domestic animals as seen in the painted relievos 
on the tomb of the priest at Sakkara, as in the city and village of 
to-day. A man drives his geese along the pictured limestone 
rock in a deep cave, whose existence was hidden by 3,000 years of 
accumulated sand. A man in flowing robe and heavy turban 
drives through Cairo's streets a flock which might have sat as 
models before the artist who died before Moses played his game 
of hide and seek in the buUrushes. The fellah digs up the sand 
for his melon-hill with a short wooden hoe, which can be dupli- 
cated in the Boolak Museum from a lot of implements dug up by 
Mariette with its owner, whose mummy commenced gardening 
before Joshua blew down Jericho's wall with the bass note of a 
ram's horn. A woman gracefully carries, poised on her head, an 
earthen jar, holding five or six gallons of water, just as her grand- 
mother of the hundred and eightieth generation is seen doing in a 



302 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

tomb chiselled by vanity in the rock not long after the flood. A 
brickmaker molds his brick in a single mold, which he places on 
the smooth ground, then works up his mud with his hand, 
sprinkles a little water over the dough, and claps it down into the 
mold, lifts the mold up, and so proceeds to make others until his 
row is finished. He is squatting on his haunches while he works, 
and the bricks are then left to dry, and are built unburned into 
the wall ; and if a large brick be needed, he mixes straw with the 
mud, doing it all in the self-same manner shown in the tombs to 
have been followed by that son of Israel whose idleness brought 
on the blow from his master, which aroused Moses' Irish, and 
caused him to do the smiting which made him escape a thrashing 
by the flight into the wilderness. The result — the theology which 
has regenerated the western world. The farm laborer squats, 
now, as in the dead past, down on the ground to reap the ripe 
wheat with a sickle not eight inches long, gathering it to him by 
the handful. Full-robed Boaz is seen standing about in patri- 
archal dignity, while his laborers work, and Ruth gleans a few 
fallen heads. Ruth, however, now rarely finds favor in Boaz's 
sight, for, unlike her predecessor, she is not comely. All the 
comely Ruths are picked up when they are lo to 12 years old. 
The harvested grain is carried to the threshing-ground on camels, 
oxen, and donkeys, and there it is threshed out by oxen drawing 
a«ort of sled with a roller between the runners. This was, and is, 
drawn round and round, threshing out the kernel and breaking 
the straw. The chaff is winnowed out by throwing it up to be 
blown away by the breeze. The broken straw is then piled up 
about the village until it is eaten \)y the cattle. There is no rain 
to hurt it, though it lies in an uncovered pile for months. Three- 
thousand-year-old Egyptians are doing the self-same things on the 
walls of the sculptured tombs. A large number of the hired 
laborers carry home on their heads, or their wives do, a certain 
number of sheaves, the wages for the day's work. This they 
thresh out carefully, and store it away in earthen jars. Each 
household grinds its own corn or wheat on two millstones — the 
under one about two feet across, the upper three or four inches 
less. A woman squats by these, turns the upper on the lower one, 
and feeds them by dropping a small handful of grain into a hole run- 
ning through the upper stone. She does this to-day precisely as the 
contemporary of Pharoah's daughter is seen doing it on pictured 
tomb walls. The flour or meal passes out upon the margin of the 
lower stone, and is raked off with the hand. This is baked into 
thin cakes of unleavened bread. Sculptured or painted pictures 
in a tomb at Assouan, lately opened, showed all of these things 
were done in selfsame manner 3,400, and over, years ago. The 
oven in which the baking is done is heated by burning buffalo- 
chips and cow-coal. One can occasionally see shreds of the coal 
sticking into the under side of the cake. That happens when the 



THE EGYPTIAN HOUSE. 303 

cow failed to sufficiently masticate her fodder. It does not hurt 
the bread, for fire is a purifier. 

The people all live in villages. These are on eminences of 
a few feet, made by the debris of towns which have melted 
down. For countless ages unburnt brick has been used. As a 
house tumbles it raises a foundation for the succeeding house. 
Nothing can be more unattractive than an Egyptian village — a 
mass of mud walls on narrow in-and-out, crooked alleys. A space 
of 60 feet square is surrounded by a wall eight to ten feet high. 
Cross-walls are built within, dividing the square into three, four, 
or more compartments, with doorways opening one into another. 
One or two of these comprise what may be called a house. Some 
of these compartments are covered over with long millet or doura 
straw, laid loosely — not laid to keep out rain, but for shade. In 
the other compartments the cattle are housed or corralled, and 
the little worldly wealth, consisting of a few farm implements and 
large earthen jars for holding grain, are stored. An old broken 
jar or a hole in the wall is the only cupboard. There are no bed- 
steads, tables, or chairs in the establishments. The people sleep 
on the ground, either in the covered rooms or in the outer com- 
partments or little courts, or along the walls in the narrow streets 
or alleys. The men seem to do this latter — the women and chil- 
dren being within. I refer of course, to the abodes of the poor 
people. Some of the better off, even in villages, have their houses 
covered with mud. On the side of all houses the refuse of animals 
is dried in cakes about the size of dinner plates for fuel. Fodder 
and fuel are stacked on the roof. Chickens, goats, and dogs are 
constantly seen on the roof or walking along the walls of the 
open courts. 

The people are poor, but look neither sullen nor unhappy. 
They like better to work with energy on odd jobs than to plod at 
regular labor. The farms of individual owners are small — five to 
twenty acres. There are great numbers of cattle, goats, and many 
sheep and donkeys. Among the cattle are many buffalo. There 
is no such thing as regular pastures for grazing. After the fields 
have been harvested they are grazed over until the last straw and 
almost the very roots of grasses and weedy plants have been 
eaten out. Goats and sheep feed on the scant vegetation to be 
found on the edge of the desert and about ruins. Cattle, how- 
ever, do not depend on this sort of grazing, but feed on clover, 
vetch, beans, and peas, planted and cultivated for the purpose. 
They are either tethered or are strictly watched, and forced to 
graze small plats close into the ground, and then moved to a new 
plat. The donkey is seen everywhere. Camels are principally 
used for carrying the bulk of the crop in middle and upper Egypt 
from the fields to the farmyards, and bullocks and cows do the 
plowing; the little, patient ass is the common drudge. He is like 
the maid-of-all-work in an English hash boarding-house. There is 



304 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

nothing he cannot be made to take a hand at. He is steed for 
man and woman. As such he is generally ridden without bridle 
or saddle, except in the cities, and then the spindle shanks of the 
rider dangle down with rarely the foot in the stirrup, and the reins 
lie loose, the animal being guided by a stick in the rider's hand, 
or by the boy who runs behind. They carry huge loads of grass, 
or monster bags of chaff, cut straw, or other light material, hiding 
all but the ears and a little part of the rear anatomy, left for 
cudgelling. The camel, when loaded with wheat, looks like a good- 
sized stack of straw walking on stilts — all else is hidden, except 
his bird-like head, which is always moving and peering from side 
to side. 

Of late years the Khedive has tried to introduce a large cultiva- 
tion of sugar-cane, and to encourage it, erected some 50 large 
sugar manufactories along the Nile. More than half of them are 
idle. One of the great features of the village are the tall pigeon 
towers. These are turret-looking structures, 12 to 15 feet square, 
and 20 to 30 high. They are the really aristocratic buildings of 
the village. I counted 50 odd of them in a place of not over 400 
population. The pigeons nest in and roost on and about them, 
their droppings going through a grating to be gathered as guano. 
They are kept for this purpose. I was told that one village we 
saw had 250,000. It is a mooted question if they do not eat more 
grain than they are worth. The wheat is left standing until dead- 
ripe, and consequently much is shattered out. Wheat-straw is 
very coarse, and nearly as hard and strong as reeds. In being 
threshed under the roller-sled it is mashed, and thereby made 
fitter for fodder. 

When we left Cairo the wheat-fields were just yellowing, and 
much was yet green. It, together with the clover and vetch and 
peas, gave a variegated carpet to the plains. The clumps of stately 
date trees are so frequent near Cairo that, together with the 
occasional acacias, they frequently afford an almost wooded land- 
scape, looked at from the level. As we approached Upper Egpyt, 
the fields were more yellow and the harvest was begun, and great 
peripatetic stacks of straw were moving in different directions 
along the narrow paths on camels and small ones on donkeys. 

At Assyout we boarded, at night, a little flat-bottomed steam- 
boat, only 90 feet long, and drawing two and a half. When we 
woke up in the morning we were upon the most famous river of 
the world, and steaming toward that point which has been so 
often inquired for and sought, but vainly sought, for thousands of 
years — the source of " The Nile " (or " the river"). There were five 
first-class passengers ; three enthusiastic young Americans — mag- 
ua pars fui — and two Englishmen, Col. Harrington-Bey and Maj. 
Marrice-Bey, of the mounted police. The national police is a 
military organization, officered by Englishmen, and is divided into 
four departments, the head of each bearing the title of pasha, the 



FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 305 

next two being beys. Our little boat frequently bumped plump 
against sand-bars, toppling us over, but only causing a laugh, all 
the greater when once it emptied soup into a lap. An awning 
covered the top of the boat, but the reflected sun was too fierce 
to permit its shade to be a pleasant lounging-place after nine 
o'clock. It, however, was a sufficient protection to enable us to 
go up for a few minutes when passing any scenery or spot we 
wished to carefully observe over the high banks. 

The river cuts its way between banks 20 or so feet high ; is 
from a little over a quarter of a mile to three quarters wide, and 
flows steadily, with a current in low water of three miles an hour. 
It shifts its bed gradually from one side to the other, now cutting 
into the black, sandy loam on the one side, exposing now and 
then the foundations of towns buried ages ago, and making sand- 
bars on the other, which are utilized by the natives for melon- 
patches as the water recedes. Where these bars are of too clean 
a sand for a growth, a little loam from the debris of villages and 
ruins, full of nitre, is carried on the patient little donkey. The 
winds pouring steadily up or down the river are so strong that the 
sands are woven into pretty, wavy lines, and would cover the 
plantations of melons. To prevent this, barriers are made by 
sticking rows of doura-stalks or palm fronds, from a few inches to 
two or three feet high, on the windward side of each row of 
young plants. Near Cairo the seeds were being planted ; about 
Assouan the melon hills were green and the plants in bloom. I 
heaved many a sign when looking upon the yet fruitless vines, for 
I am so fond of watermelons that I have a suspicion that if my 
family tree were closely scrutinized, down among its primitive 
roots, would be found some Ethiopian kinks. 

By the way, we had a family of natives in one of the rooms. 
There were three ladies, closely veiled in flowing black silken 
" bourkos," which were never removed outside of their own rooms. 
Sweet is forbidden fruit! The boys were constantly on the watch 
to catch a glimpse of these bundled up houris. The rooms of the 
little steamer open only on the guards. One day a gust of wind 
blew a bourko aside. The boys saw within the pearly gate, and 
lo ! the sweet vision was of a face as black as the ace of spades !.' 
I read to my disappointed lads a lecture upon the folly — not to 
say criminality — of attempting to rend a veil over which was 
written " intrare nony We saw very many Arabian Rachels with 
their flocks of goats about the river banks, or trudging over the 
broad sand-bars with huge earthern jars of water on their heads, 
wending their way toward the villages, most of which lie back 
some distance from the river's edge, but never a Jacob assisting 
them. The fact that Jacob did assist fair and lovely Rachel is 
proof positive of direct divine interference. Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob were Arabs of the desert, and would never have given a 
helping hand to a woman if the Lord had not directly com^ 



3o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

manded it. The woman of the East does not now pray to the 
master, the Lord, but to the master, the man, and so the Lord has 
deserted her, and the master man pays but little attention to her, 
except when her comely face finds temporary favor in his sight. 
Her beauty, too, is usually of such a character that it does not 
shine forth until after the sun has gone down. 

We had down below, among the general deck passengers, many 
well-to-do natives returning from the city, where they had been 
to purchase their stock of goods. It was interesting to watch 
them when landing for some large town standing a m.ile or so 
back. Prancing horses, some in velvet caparison, others in simple 
cloth, some with partly gilded bridles, others plain ; donkeys in red 
trappings, and donkeys without saddle or bridle, were on the high 
bank to take the travellers home. Turbaned men in silken 
robes, turbaned men in cotton robes, would climb steep banks 
with their wealth. There would be clatter and noise enough for 
the disembarkation of a western regiment. The rich would mount 
their neighing steeds, the poorer would pile their plunder upon 
the naked donkeys, and then perch themselves on top of all. Some 
little brute would be slightly unruly; a blow would fall about his 
ears; he would dodge and interpose his convenient rear. If in 
turning he caught sight of a lady donkey, he would bray out one 
of his most touching love songs. The gallantry of the donkey 
cannot be tamed by cuffs or blows. Then the motley crowd would 
start ; the steeds careering, the donkeys under saddle galloping, 
those under loads single footing it, and ofT they would dash 
through a cloud of dust, which would mark the well-worn path to 
the village. 

Sometimes on a landing barge there was a native soldier about 
to depart after a furlough. Half-veiled women would gather 
about him, perhaps his mother and sisters or wife. One would 
press upon him a cake, another would brush some dirt from his 
uniform. The mother would lay her hand upon his shoulder. 
Her dark eyes would melt beneath the openings of her bourko as 
she looked lovingly upon her soldier-boy and poured words 
of love into his ears. Ah, deeper far than Joseph's well at Cairo 
is the unfathomable well of a mother's love. Its fountains flow 
steadily, whether the mother be Hindoo or Buddhist, Mohamme- 
dan, Jew, or Christian. It flows from a fathomless fountain 
beneath the throne of eternal love. Formerly an Egyptian bade 
an adieu forever to his home when he was conscripted. Now, 
under English control, the conscript has an occasional furlough, 
and a mother's love lives in the reasonable hope of again seeing 
her boy. England is a hard taskmistress, but she is not savage. 

About Assouan the granite was belched through the sandstone, 
when the crust fell in to make the valley. This granite is red 
syenite, but along the river it is blackened and in fantastic forms, 
and is in rounded, smooth, water-worn masses, thrown in among the 



SHOOTING THE CATARACT. 307 

many channels of the cataracts. It looks as if it had been black- 
ened with coal tar and then polished. The scenery about the 
cataracts and just below is very wild, and yet very pretty. The 
red and yellow-gray rocks above, the shining black, smooth, mon- 
ster rocks below, and rushing between them the wild waters in 
frothy, hurrying rapids ; here in lifted but unbroken streams, 
now in foaming cascade, then in whirling eddies. We came 
down the cataract in a boat of six oars, with a cool-headed " reis" 
at the helm. Now we shot down one fall, then, caught by an 
eddy, would be carried sideways toward the next. With a hard 
helm, however, and one range of oars pulled by quick, manly 
energy, our prow would be pointed into the lifted channel. Down 
it we shot like an arrow from a bow, and came out with a wild 
yell. At one point we were very nearly forced sideways down. 
The channel was not two feet wider than our boat was long. We 
touched one rocky edge, the oarsmen were thrown from their 
seats, and we missed a ducking by the skin of our teeth. 

On our way up, when we reached Edfoo there were no saddled 
donkeys for us to ride to the temple, two or three miles off, so we 
mounted some barebacked fellows, and without bridles dashed 
over the little paths like three wild boys. It was a jolly ride. 
One of the brutes fell, and Johnny went tumbling over a bank. 
Our laugh was turned upon us afterward. For on reaching 
Luxor, at 1 1 o'clock at night, we took a moonlight run to Karnak 
on illy-provided asses. Willie that night got a header. When 
we returned from up-country my donkey fell flat at nearly the 
same spot. Not only did I roll off over his head, but in the 
tumble somehow found myself lying somehow on one of the 
brute's hind legs, while his other heel was giving fearful premoni- 
tions of his intention to give me a round of kicks. Honors were 
thus even ; we each had a header from an Egyptian ass. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

DR. SCHLIEMANN— THEBES : ITS TEMPLES AND TOMBS— BEAUTI- 
FUL PICTURE-WRITING— A NATIVE FEAST. 

Steamship " Charkie," April 19, 1888. 

We are aboard the Khedive's post-steamer, having sailed from 
Alexandria yesterday, and will arrive at Athens to-morrow. 
I would not attempt another letter about Egypt if I did not 
feel it a duty to do so. It is not an agreeable thing to write in a 
shaky boat, but, after all, those are not the most valuable occupa- 
tions which are most agreeable in the performance, unless the 
mere doing a duty be of itself agreeable. I have come to regard 
the noting down of what I see on my " race with the sun " as a 
positive duty, and therefore productive of a real pleasure. We 
have a pleasant company abroad, among them Dr. Schliemann, 
the famous excavator, and Dr. Virchow, consulting physician of 
the Emperor Frederick. The first is an active, fussy little man 
of over 70, full of chat and energy, whose delight is to worm ia 
the ground in search of antiquities having not only archaeological 
value, but also capable of bringing in good golden Napoleons. 
He looks like an honest Deutcher who gains his living by digging 
for mangel-wurzel rather than for dead men's bones and chiselled 
dreams ; in fact, more like a gardener than a virtuoso. He walks 
about the deck with Herodotus in the original under his arm ; is 
proud of being a German by birth and yet an American citizen who 
never went through the forms of being naturalized. He was in 
California when it was annexed, and became a citizen by virtue 
of the annexation. He and Virchow have been in Egypt in 
search of the tomb of Alexander the Great, but did not find it. 
He is ready to give information on any subject he knows of, and 
will fight any one who doubts the individuality and identity of 
Homer. He vowed he would not take a wife to his bosom until 
he could find one who could recite the whole Iliad. His bright 
young Greek wife does repeat it by the yard, and understands it, 
but his boatman repeats for him at large, although he (the boat- 
man) does not comprehend any thing else than the euphony and 
rhythm of the mighty bard. The doctor lives in a veritable 
palace in Athens, surmounted with marble statues, and over 
whose doors is carved in Greek : " The tent of Ilion." 

308 



KARNAK BY MOONLIGHT. THEBES. 309 

I said in my last that, as travellers in Egypt went up the Nile 
only for the ruins, they had not prepared me for its rich scenery. 
Although I showed my appeciation of this, yet I do not wish one 
to think I was oblivious to the wonders left by art thousands of 
years ago. We had not the time to study these wonders, but 
have prepared ourselves for studying them hereafter more intelli- 
gently from books. We first looked upon massive Karnak by the 
full light of the moon. It seemed a fitting thing to wander 
among those vast stones almost as massive as mountain ribs ; to 
roam among the huge columns, vast yet rich in architectural 
form ; to lose one's self in the deep shadows of the old temple ; 
to lean against the lofty obelisks, whose points seem to pierce the 
deep-blue sky, — it seemed fitting, I say, to be in this home of 
gray antiquity in the hour of midnight, when the world was 
asleep ; when the self-same stars were peeping through clefts in 
cornice and crevasse in architrave, which had looked silently down 
upon the mass when it was new and fresh, over 30 centuries ago ; 
when the queen of night was bathing all in silvery light, and yet 
leaving the ravages of man, time, and the Nile somewhat con- 
cealed. Karnak is a ruin, — not a half-destroyed temple, as most 
pictures portray it. It was once a group of noble temples, cover- 
ing, with their long avenues of colossal sphinxes, many hundred 
acres. Parts of several of them still exist, massive and grand, but 
simply fragments, which enable the archseologist alone to trace 
out from them the foundations of the buildings of which they 
formed only small parts. All of these massive fragments, consist- 
ing of propylsea (outer gates), of massive walls and fallen columns, 
architraves and cornices, are richly adorned in sculptured relief, 
deep-cut into the huge stones in figures of gods and kings, and 
sharp-cut hieroglyphics commemorative of the deeds of those whose 
figures are shown. From these figures and hieroglyphic surround- 
ings the scientist unfolds the pages of a long-dead history, and 
enables us to know what men and kings did long before history 
was born. On our downward voyage on the Nile we visited them 
twice again, spending long hours by day among the ruins. Much 
of the walls and many of the mighty columns of the great temple 
of Rameses, with the vast stones above forming roof and entabla- 
ture, still exist in more or less tumbled-down condition. This 
huge structure, all in elaborate and massive art, covered with its 
outer wall a space not far from a mile and a half round, with a 
height of over 70 feet, and walls of vast thickness. Here were 
hundreds of huge columns, from 8 to 12 feet in diameter 
and 40 to 60 feet high, richly carved. Some of them have 
been thrown so as to lean over against others, the vast hanging 
stones of the architraves looking like the rocks of a toppling 
precipice. Two obelisks, nearly 100 feet high, of solid granite, 
stand as if their roots were deep in the earth, but one, lying 
broken, shows that the Nile in its annual washing finds no foun- 
dation too firm for it to undermine. 



3IO A RACE WITH THE SUIV. 

No other ruins in Egypt are so massive as these of Karnak, 
though there are others in a better condition. The Nile has done 
more to bring the mighty temples of old Thebes (Luxor) down 
than has the hand of man. But religious fanaticism, both Chris- 
tian, under the Eastern empire, and Mohammedan, within i,ooo 
years, has done its best to deface all that was purely artistic. 
Modern taste would find little to admire in the beautiful sculptures 
on any of the old temples if the rock had not been too hard for 
the hand of the fanatic hammerer or the elevation too great for a 
lazy priesthood to reach, or if the massiveness and multitude of 
the sculptures had not been too great for indolent muscle to pick 
away. The Nile, too, while a destroyer, has also been a preserver 
by filling up the lower parts of many temples. This accumulated 
soil being removed discloses the covered parts in almost original 
form. The temple of Luxor, close to the river, is a grand one, 
but less impressive than Karnak. The ruins of Medeenet Aboo, 
across the river on the west bank, however, in many respects 
pleased me more. But it would be a waste of space to attempt to 
describe this, or even any more of them. Thebes was a mighty 
city, and left many ruins to attest its grandeur. 

Back of the old city, in gorges in the mountains on the west 
bank, are the "tombs of the kings," whose mummies and papyrus 
rolls have been so valuable to the world of letters. These tombs 
are cut into the solid rock, all sloping downward and running under 
the mountains from lOO to 500 feet, in long galleries 12 to 20 odd 
feet wide and 9 to 12 feet deep. In different parts of them are 
large chambers whose walls, as well as those of the long galleries, 
are covered with sculptures in deep relief, and with hieroglyyhic 
writing beautifully sharp. The sculptures are the figures of the 
king for whom the tomb was built, of the kings and peoples whom 
he conquered, of his battles and victories, of the spoils of war, of 
captives and beasts and treasures brought back and offered to the 
gods, and of the gods themselves receiving the gifts. Many of 
these sculptures are beautifully wrought of high art (Egyptian), 
and when not defaced are bright in color as when first painted. 

There is shown everywhere evidence that the artists of the vast 
past did not trust entirely to the chisel to show form, to exhibit 
beauty, or to express action. Sculptures within doors and with- 
out seem all to have been painted. Those in the tombs were 
fresh when exhumed, and many are still bright. On the exposed 
temples time and the few rains of Egypt through thousands of 
years have only left traces of the old colors. The smoke of 
torches, and even the pencil of vanity, have tarnished most of the 
paintings' in the tombs, but enough yet remains to delight the 
student and please the curious man. 

In some tombs, discovered opposite Assouan two years ago, 
there are picture-writings of exquisite finish and perfect preserva- 
tion. I have rarely seen forms, especially of birds, drawn with a 



THE TOMBS AND THEIR ADORNMENTS. 311 

freer hand, or showing more grace or ease of pose. One can al- 
most say they are the hving hnks connecting the dead past with 
the present. They seem to step and move, and step and move 
with stately gravity, and are as fresh as the things of yesterday. 
They have not been injured as yet, and perhaps will not be, for 
now the government preserves, more or less carefully, all antiq- 
uities. These tombs were boarded up when we visited them, and 
it being after the visiting season, the guardians were not about. 
We hoisted each other over the boarding on each other's shoul- 
ders, and then pulled up the last. There were masses of bones of 
mummies, mummy boxes, and these beautiful picture-paintings, 
which amply repaid us for some bruised shins and torn fingers. 
We brought away a jaw-bone or two without cost, but were too 
honest to bring away a whole figure or mummy box, though 
sorely tempted. These caves were the last opened, and are not 
yet mentioned in the guide-books. Brugsch Bey, whom I after- 
ward met in the Boolak Museum, told me they were the oldest 
yet found, being at least of the fifth dynasty. Dr. Schliemann 
says they are of the second, — that is, 4,000 years before Christ. 
The sands which fell ages ago from the upper heights of the cliffs 
in which the tombs were cut covered their mouths and kept man 
out, and thus preserved these valuable relics until now, when they 
are so highly appreciated. 

The cliffs along the valley in some localities are honeycombed 
with tombs, and I doubt not that there are many yet uncovered, 
and possibly unsuspected. Some will yet be found, perhaps, of 
great value, for the government has one or two fine steamers on 
the river devoted entirely to archaeology. I am told that Marri- 
ette's successor is an able and industrious man. It seems some- 
what droll that there should be in this active age a governmental 
department whose sole duty is to stir up dead men's bones. The 
ancient Egyptian had a solemn cast of thought, and a sombre 
taste, but I think he knew the true resting-places for the dead. 
He selected spots which death would naturally choose for his 
court — wild, desolate gorges — cliffs in which no life is seen, where 
not an ivy or a desert-thorn could live. Of all dead spots I have 
ever visited none seem so absolutely dead and desolate as the 
gorge in which are the tombs of the kings at old Thebes. Modern 
sentimentality makes a cemetery a park or garden in which lovers 
wander to gather flowers when the keepers are out of sight, and 
to flirt with a tombstone for a trysting-place, and vanity stalks 
with more dashing step in a graveyard and in funeral trappings 
than it does at a birth or a marriage. There was a reason for the 
pomp of the Egyptian's tomb. They believed the spirit of the 
dead lived in and about its preserved mummy, and that the loved 
one gone appreciated and enjoyed the pomps of its surroundings. 
Not to deck it out in splendor was to leave it in neglect which it 
would feel in sorrow, and, perhaps, resent in anger. But they 



312 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

favored gloomy splendor and awful pomp, and believed the dead 
revelled in such. We, however, believe that the spirit of our 
dead quits this miserable dust forever — dust which has been a 
charnel-house for the imprisoned spirit, — and wings its flight far 
beyond the stars ; that the sufferings and griefs of those left be- 
hind cannot ruffle the sweet tranquillity of the far-off happy new 
life, and yet we grieve in sackcloth and ashes, and peep from be- 
hind our trappings of woe to see if the world fully discovers the 
depth of our sorrow. We deck the tomb of the dead as if the 
spirit nightly sate upon its own head-stone and delighted in nose- 
gays. Much of this is to feed the vanity of the living. But real 
and sincere grief is often selfish, as is joy, and gloats upon the 
thought that the world witnesses its agony. 

At Assyout we climbed, on our return from above, the high hill 
which is so full of tombs that, at a long distance, it almost re- 
sembles a titanic dove-cote. Skulls lay about, and mummy-cloth 
was sticking in the sands. Old tombs, long since stripped of their 
occupants and devoid of architecture, were being broken up to 
roll down below to be burned into lime. Under us was the Arab 
cemetery of to day, a regular stiff, cemented city of the dead, with 
white domes and courts for the family or hired mourners to stay 
in when grieving periodically. On our way out we had passed a 
troop of women howling on their way to the tombs. We knew 
they were mourning for some well-to-do person. The intensity 
of their grief could only come from gold-distilling tears, and 
showed that they were well paid for it. Some persons in the far 
west are occasionally met who would find mourning by proxy 
most charming. The boys ascended to the highest points to look 
over the desert behind, leaving me alone among the old vaults. 
As I sat at nearly sunset among these old homes of the dead, 
deserted now even by their ghastly tenants, I saw a hyena come 
out of one. He looked down upon the modern cemetery, from 
which came up faintly the voices of the howling women, gave a 
sort of chuckle, and trotted off. I wondered if he and his race 
had not contracted the habit of laughing from living about tombs 
and seeing the hollow vanity of man. This was the only one of 
the laughing brutes I saw in Egypt. 

By the way, another of the old acquaintances of the Nile trav- 
eller, the crocodile, has entirely disappeared below the first cata- 
ract, and almost entirely up to the second or third. The keen 
love of sport of the Englishman has been too much for him. I 
thought I saw one just below Phylae, at the upper end of the 
cataract, but it turned out to be a woman swimming the river 
with a baby in her arms. She was on one of the little floats used 
so much on the Upper Nile — a stick of wood, say eight inches in 
diameter, five feet long, and turned up slightly at one end like a 
sled-runner. A woman will slip off her robes, putting them in a 
flat basket, poise it upon her head, hold her baby in her arms, 



WOMEN SWIMMING THE NILE. 313 

and on this little float go back and forth. As she emerges from 
the water she puts her garments on, and goes forth at least cleaner 
than she went in. I saw one thus swimming with a basket of 
vegetables on her head and a baby in her arms. She was taking 
her little truck to market. It is, from what I could learn, the 
only bath she takes. The Bedouin never washes all over, and 
his face rarely. A fellah back from the river washes his feet and 
face, but his odor shows that this is all. I suppose it is a relic of 
his desert antecedents, where water is scarce. 

The great majority of the present Egyptian population is Arab. 
The Copts, about 500,000, claim descent from the ancient people 
of the Pharaohs, but they more resemble the Arabs than the pic- 
tures on the walls. It will interest our boys to learn that, on the 
Nile, as in Ceylon and on the Red Sea, when natives swim 
rapidly they invariably go hand over hand. When desirous of 
swimming particularly fast they dive as far as possible. They are 
expert divers, and catch water-fowl by going under them. At 
Luxor Hotel we saw some droll pet pelicans caught in this way. 
Of these, as of other water birds, there are great numbers on the 
Nile. I saw a flock of several hundred pelicans ranged very curi- 
ously in files on a sand-bar. About half were in rows, one behind 
the other, all with heads turned toward our steamer coming from 
below. The other half were in files looking up stream. I no- 
ticed, I thought, five or six which seemed an exception to this 
order, but on close scrutiny with my glass I found these were 
storks along the outer edge of the flock, and not a pelican was 
looking out of line. The carvings and paintings in the tombs 
show that, in the time of the Pharaohs, the same birds were to 
be found in Egypt that are found there to-day. Some animals 
are no longer frequenters of the land that were there 4,000 years 
ago. Crocodiles and hippopotami were as far north as the Delta, 
but not within the range of written history. Wild geese, cranes, 
herons, and snipe of several varieties were constantly seen, both 
on the wall-carving and to-day along the river. 

I spoke of the damage done the old temples by the Nile. 
Nearly all "of them stand on inundated land. The water has 
gradually eaten into the foundations and lower members, and so 
causes the superstructure to tumble. In olden time the water 
was excluded hy dykes. In some temples the Nile deposit has been 
several feet deep. In all, the debris of towns and villages has filled 
them often to the roof. These have been, or are now being, exca- 
vated. There seems to be a law of nature that where there is growth 
there is life, and, e converso, where there is life there is growth. 
Wherever there is found either animal or vegetable life, there the 
very earth grows. Old things everywhere lie covered beneath 
new things. Where men have lived, their cities or their founda- 
tions are found buried ; where vegetable nature alone holds high 
court, there trees and their debris are found far below the surface. 



314 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

In the mountain heights and in desert places where there is no 
life, there denudation is constantly going on. The earth itself 
does not grow in such localities. Most of this, I suppose, is car- 
ried off by rivers into the deep seas. Whence comes the mass of 
matter which covers and is yet covering deeper year by year the 
mighty plains and tablelands? Perhaps from meteoric dust, 
which is said to fall in millions of tons every year. Perhaps, 
also, from the impalpable powder which makes up the comet's 
transparent tail. If care be not used at the duinp of these 
mighty dirt carriers, there will some day be brought about a lack 
of equillibrium on our globe, and a turning over in its bed, and 
then some of our fine cities will be wrapped in mountains of ice, 
and a torrid equator may run within the Arctic circle. 

At Luxor we took a long camel ride on our last day. The 
beasts were not dromedaries, but were well gaited, and carried us 
in good trots. We had none of the trying twist in the back, as if 
one were a dish-rag being wrung out by a lusty cook, such as one 
gets on the ordinary swing-walking camel. We saw all the ruins 
near the river from Phylae down, — Edfoo, Denderah, etc., — but 
were most pleased by the tombs about Sakkarah, near the ruins 
of old Memphis, some miles above Cairo. There was an immense 
cave cemetery in the olden days of Egypt ; some of them were 
as old or older than the pyramids. The tombs cover a space 
nearly five miles long and run back into the high desert plateau a 
quarter of a mile to a mile. Many of them have been opened by 
archaeologists, but only a few are kept so, for the blowing sands 
fill the mouth of the tomb almost as fast as they can be carried 
away. We had a blizzard of sand the day we visited them. The 
wind came up with great speed from the desert, driving the sand 
into our faces with the force of small shot. Our eyes burned and 
our cheeks smarted. The sun grew dim, and when yet three 
hours high we looked into his face without a blink. He was 
hardly as bright as one often sees the moon in a mid-afternoon. 
There was no redness whatever about him, but a cold dimness, 
and when we looked at him on the west bank, far away from the 
desert, when he was yet an hour high, he was a miserably pale 
orb, and was lost entirely a half hour before his time for setting. 

The Serapeum, or tomb of the sacred bulls, at Sakkarah, is a 
huge thing, several galleries of great size hewn from the solid 
rock, with side chambers or deep recesses in which are monster 
sarcophagi of granite 13 feet long, 8 wide, and li high, with 
monster lids of several tons weight. One of these galleries is 
nearly 1,200 feet long, and about 30 sarcophagi yet sit where 
they were placed 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. The older galleries, 
of over 3,000 years ago, have so fallen in since their exhumation 
as not to be easily visited. The walls of the tombs are richly 
carved, and the long galleries are lined with votive tablets placed 
there by individual worshippers. These vast vaults cut into the 



WE HAVE A NATIVE FEAST. 315 

solid limestone and these huge cofifins of granite are the last rest- 
ing places of mummied bulls. Oh, religion ! what antics thy 
votaries have cut as the ages have rolled along! Nothing in 
nature too revolting to be worshipped, nothing in imagination 
too cruel and bloodthirsty or too selfish to be adored. 

When we awoke in the morning, after boarding the downward 
steamer at Luxor, we found Harrington-Bey and Marrice-Bey 
aboard. We had left them at Assouan. Colonel Harrington in- 
formed us he had received by wire an invitation for us to dine 
with a rich native, h la Turk, at Gurgeh, where we would tie up 
for the night. Unfortunately, we went plump upon a sand bar in 
sight of the town, and were detained over three hours, getting 
into port at nearly midnight. But we found our host and ser- 
vants with lanterns ready to conduct us to his hospitable 
mansion. It was furnished after European style, with fine 
carpets, curtains, and brilliant chandeliers. After cigarettes, we 
were invited into the dining-room, where a table was loaded with 
bottles of wine and cordials, but with no plates. In the centre 
was a large bowl containing a kind of soup. There were seven 
of us. Each had a spoon, and bread with seed worked into the 
crust. I was placed at the host's right, and informed in tolerably 
fair French that the house was ours, and the repast begun. Re- 
ceiving a hint from the Colonel that I, as the chief guest, was to 
be the leader, as if the house was mine, I commenced my soup 
from the bowl. Each followed suit, dipping his spoon into the 
common tureen. When we had sufificiently partaken of the fluid, 
still instructed by my military friend, I motioned the servants to 
remove it. Then followed a large roast, a whole lamb stuffed. I 
pulled off a piece of lamb with my fingers. There were no knives 
or forks. The better informed followed the example, but went 
further and pulled out the inside stuffing with their fists ; getting 
dry and no one offering wine, I felt I was again at fault, so I took 
a bottle of claret and directed the servants to draw the cork. 
The host then got up and poured our glasses full. There were 
small plates of sweetmeats of several kinds near each guest. 
Between courses we eat of these and drank champagne. A large 
platter full of stuffed vegetable marrow, whole roasted stuffed 
onions and artichokes, and some smaller vegetables made the 
second course. These found their way to our mouths without 
spoons or fork. Talk was gay. The host apologized for having 
the feast served native fashion, with the statement that it had 
been the Colonel's request. Roast turkey came next ; afterward 
followed pigeons, sausages, etc., with vegetables intervening. 
When the fourteenth course was reached, one of the boys was 
forced to loosen up his waistband, and Marrice-Bey declared he 
was a good feeder, but his father and mother had not intended 
him for a barrel. I cried halt. We were, however, forced to 
attack the fifteenth course, consisting of nicely-stuffed quail. 



3i6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

With several more courses in sight in the side room, I arose, when 
all followed. In the parlor were served delicious coffee and 
cigarettes. The host regretted that he had not known sooner 
that we would honor him, so that he could have made a better 
preparation. He was a wealthy Copt, but drank very lightly. 
He accompanied us to the little boat, where we found our ship 
berths fitted us closer than they had done the night before. 

The following evening, at Assyout, we had a delightful informal 
dinner at Col. Harrington's, in good English style, and spent the 
evening with his charming wife, and Johnson Pasha and his bright 
lady. The Pasha is the head of the mounted police in that depart- 
ment. The dinner was prepared in thorough English style, and was 
a real treat to us. Many months had passed since we had par- 
taken of a home-like meal. 

With the statement that Cairo is a beautiful city, fairly to 
be called the Paris of the East, the people in their gay attendance 
at the bright street cafes reminding one constantly of the French 
capital, and that the new part of Alexandria is very handsome, I 
v/ill end this chapter. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

GRECIAN SKY COLORING— FEELINGS AWAKENED BY ATHENS— RICH 
ART TREASURES CONSTANTLY EXHUMED— THE FUTURE OF 
GREECE— CORINTH— EARTHQUAKES— A WONDERFUL SUNSET 
—FAREWELL GREECE. 

Athens, April 26, 1888. 

Visiting Greece many years ago, I approached it from Con- 
stantinople, passing through the many islands of the ^gean Sea 
in the hot month of August. I was delighted with the constantly 
varying pictures presented by the lofty island heights — broken, 
yet graceful, with deep gorges so clothed in verdure, that they 
seemed smiling dimples on the mountain sides. The rich dyes 
distilled from a burning sun were showered over land and sea, 
clothing both in softest colorings, changing from hour to hour as 
the sun climbed to the zenith and then sank toward the west. 
At one time the mountains, hills, and valleys were wrapped in a 
bluish haze ; then changed to a purple ; then to a violet, over 
which a pink bloom would spread as delicate as the blush on an 
opal's cheek, and in the sunset glow a mantle of violet-orange was 
thrown over the graceful shoulders of the hills. The sea would 
now catch the blue from the skies, and then the colorings of the 
hills, and throw them back with an added beauty all its own ; and 
as the sun sank to its rest, land and sea, melting clouds, and trans- 
lucent sky were a mighty canvas, over which the very spirit of 
beauty spread rainbow tints in exuberant revelry. The memory 
of these glorious pictures has always lived with me, and has been 
the inspiration of many a dream of the past. 

When we started on our " race with the sun," I began at once to 
look forward to a renewal of my former pleasure in going through 
the Grecian isles. When coming from Egypt, now, I was up be- 
fore the sun on our second day out to watch his first kiss upon 
Milo's conical peak. I watched the first ray caught by the island 
cone, and then later saw him lighting up Sephanto and Thermia, 
and the graceful sky-lines of ^gina, and the highlands of Argolis. 
But the glorious tints were not there. Was it owing to the cooler 
months that they were lacking, or had my eyes grown dim and 
my marrow become cold, since I was here in the hey-day of youth ? 
I felt disappointed, and mostly so with myself. I whispered that 
I would touch Attic soil, and then my boyish enthusiasm would re- 
turn. We landed at Piraeus, and drove up to Athens. There, to 

317 



3i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

my right, was Hymettus, on whose rocky sides grows the yellow 
flower from whose cups the bee sips a nectar tasted nowhere un- 
less in the garden of the gods. There, to my left, was low-lying 
Parnes, and over beyond, Pentelicus, whose cold marble blushes 
in the unequalled beauty of the Venus and the Psyche, and stands 
in God-like glory in the Apollo ; and there, with Lycabettus for 
a background, was the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon — 
the architect's dream in ruins. There below, in massive Pelasgic 
blocks, was the Pnyx, where Demosthenes maddened men by his 
burning tongue, and, near by, was the theatre of Dionysius, where 
./^schylus and Sophocles sang in perfected measure. 

These things were all before me as they were 36 years ago, 
and clustering among them were the same old memories, but 
the young dream of the traveller was grown cold. He had long 
ago left old Yale's classic halls redolent of the historic past ; he 
had lately come from a buzzing hive, where to-day and yesterday 
and to-morrow are worth whole ages of the long ago. Instead of 
having lately lived in a dreamland with dead heroes, he had been 
jostling against active, noisy men, in whose ears a rise in the mar- 
ket was more eloquent than any Demosthenic phillippic, and the 
electric tick, telling of a crash in stocks, was far more touching 
than a thousand farewells from Alceste's lips ; he had come from a 
throbbing world, which whispered : " Let the dead past bury its 
dead," and with exultant cry demands action -in the living present. 
I could not work up the spirit of the past. 

But I have now been here a week ; I have walked among the 
old ruins; I have talked with speaking marbles, lately exhumed 
from soil in which they had lain through silent ages; I have 
breathed an atmosphere of classic purity; I have driven beneath 
old olives, which may have furnished the oil to anoint an Al- 
cibiades when girding his loins for Olympian' triumphs ; I have 
watched the waves, to whose murmur Demosthenes may have 
attuned his thrilling words ; I have drank at fountains, which 
may have cooled the ruby lips that made Aspasia irresistible ; I 
have climbed to the lofty quarries, whence Phidias anxiously cut 
the block that was to render the fame of his genius immortal ; I 
have sat upon the lofty pinnacle which looks down upon Mara- 
thon, and upon which heroes gave a parting glance when they 
rushed in unequal struggle upon the Persian host, and made 
Marathon a synonym for victory ; I have bathed my hands in the 
cool waves of the strait of Salamis, where was crushed forever 
Asia's strength, and western civilization was made possible ; I have 
watched the full moon as she climbed the Doric column of im- 
mortal Parthenon, and seen her sit in silvered glory upon its grand 
pediment, and have looked down upon beautiful Athens, bathed 
in a very flood of silvery light ; I have sat for long hours upon the 
balcony of the Grand Bretagne Hotel, inhaling the perfume of 
orange and jasmine coming from bowers in which the nightingale 



ATHENS AND THE ACROPOLIS. 319 

was pouring out its bursting heart in delicious song, while I 
watched the splendid pile upon Acropolis in the distance, lighted 
up by the midnight moon. These things, and others of a kindred 
kind, have found the chord deep down in the soul and touched it, 
till " my heart can sing, as of yore it sang before they called me 
old." Once more I am in Greece and am again a Greek. 

Few Americans are so ignorant as not to have heard of and 
thought of Athens ; few school children so cold as not to have 
been deeply interested in its wonderful history. I shall, there- 
fore, I think, not err if I try to give a pen-picture of this most 
classic of all cities. It lies in a sort of recess between three 
ranges of mountains — an amphitheatre, if I may be permitted 
to use that word to designate a thing not circular but oblong. 
Two short ranges of mountains, Hymettus and Parnes, 1,500 to 
2,000 feet high, rocky but not absolutely desert, spring from the 
sea on the west, run in almost parallel lines about eight miles 
apart, and meet loftier Pentelicus 15 to 20 miles back. Piraeus 
is built upon a small, absolutely land-locked bay, in the centre of 
the base. Pericles and Themistocles made this the Athenian 
walled harbor, and it has so remained ever since. I must not be 
held too closely to accuracy when I give dates, dimensions, or, 
indeed, any statistical or historical data. I write for the general 
reader, that he or she may see somewhat as I see, and not for 
the information of the student; for that I have not the time, if 
I possessed the ability. Four to five miles back, and some two 
or three miles north of Hymettus, stands modern Athens, nearly 
on the site of the old city. 

Few cities outside the new world have grown and improved as 
much as this, since I was here in 1852. Let me draw you a plan 
of the city, as then, and as now seen. Imagine a bold rock near 
400 yards long by 150 in its centre and widest part, lifting 250 
to 300 feet from a somewhat uneven plain. The sides of this 
rock, which is shaped not unlike an oak-leaf, are in some parts 
precipices over 100 feet high, and everywhere else in steep, 
almost precipitous slopes. Where there were gorges, and too- 
easily accessible inclines, lofty walls were erected and filled from 
within, rendering the citadel unapproachable, except through its 
internal entrance on its western point. This is the Acropolis, 
on whose platform stands the Parthenon, whose great doric 
columns, and massive architraves are in such perfect proportions 
that they seem almost light and airy. There is the beautiful 
Erectheum, whose Ionic columns and friezes have been, and are, 
the models of graceful architecture; and the gem in marble, little 
" Nike," the temple of winged victory, which the Athenians 
claimed had here made her home. Around and about this hill 
are the remains of other classic edifices. 

Ancient Athens lay around and under the citadel, but was 
mainly to the southward, southwest and southeast. There, scat- 



320 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

tered from the east to the west are the Stadium, on the extreme 
east ; then the majestic columns of the great temple of Jupiter 
Olympus, and, following in succession, more or less distant one 
from the other, come the Theatre of Dionysius, the Odeum, the 
Pnyx, or ancient forum ; the Areopagus, where the people met 
in civic power, the almost complete temple of Theseus, perfect 
in style, if it had not in contrast, near by the Parthenon ; and 
finally on the extreme west, the ancient cemetery, Ceramicus. 

Modern Athens lies to the north, commencing on the slope of 
Acropolis, and running from the westward near Ceramicus, 
around and under lofty Lycabettus, with its sharp rock peak 900 
feet high, to the Stadium on the east. From east to west the 
diameter is over two miles, and from north to south, a little over 
a mile. 

In 1852 the city had a population of 8,000 to 11,000, and 
offered nothing of beauty except the coloring of Hymettus, 
which it was, and is yet claimed, decks itself in a distinct varying 
hue for each hour of the afternoon ; beginning with a warm 
gray at noon and running to blue and purple, pink and violet, 
and salmon-violet at sunset, to a cold gray before twilight 
ends. The town was then compact, irregular and inartistic, 
and covering a small space north and near the Acropolis. The 
Ilissus, a small stream in dry weather, but a rushing torrent 
after heavy rains, runs along the eastern edge of the town inside 
of the Stadium. Between it and the town in '52, there was a 
waste of sand and rough, desolate, uneven ground fully three- 
quarters of a mile wide. In the centre of this stood the great, 
quadrangular, ugly, new palace, with stuccoed walls. I remem- 
ber my surprise that a king would build such a residence, in 
such a desolate place, and wondered why his brother. Bavarian 
Ludvvig, who possessed taste, had not given some to Otho. They 
were both wiser than I. The city has grown up to and beyond 
the palace square, which now lies between an exquisite garden, 
and New Athens, and is filled with beautiful houses of artistic 
design. Few cities in the world are prettier than the capital of 
Greece. It possesses no magnificent public or private buildings, 
but many which are pretty and some really beautiful. 

Otho, I remember, was not an attractive-looking man. He 
was heavy in feature and expression, and of clumsy form, which 
his Albinian-Greek costume, the prettiest and most artistic in the 
world, could not hide. Indeed, it seemed cruel to put such a 
costume on so uncouth a figure. But his queen, Amelia of 
Oldenburg, was one of the handsomest women in Europe. That 
she had fine taste is proven by the exquisite garden, about a 
quarter of a mile square, adjoining the palace, which she designed 
and laid out — and, perhaps, planted, on the sands. There is in it 
none of the stiffness and formality so characteristic of royal gar- 
dens in Europe. Large palms and pretty forest trees and shrubs 



THE KINGS OF GREECE. NIGHTINGALES. 321 

are growing with a careless grace, one would think, belonging 
only to a native woods. Climbing creepers and trailing vines 
hang as if set by lavish nature. Winding walks run here and 
there as if trying to avoid some natural impediments. Oranger- 
ies and lemon groves are so planted among forest trees, that 
some of the latter look as if they had been cut down to make 
room for them. The walks are neither wide enough to look 
stiff or too narrow to prevent free circulation. I wandered for a 
couple of hours one afternoon in this charming garden all alone, by 
the special permission of the guard, and when the general public 
was not allowed to enter. So quiet was the whole, and so shaded, 
that several nightingales were singing, not so gushingly, however, 
as at night. They are very shy, but by exercising much caution, 
I was able to keep one under my glasses for a few moments. It 
is wonderful how small a thing it is to give out such a volume of 
sound. It is long and tapering, but not much larger in girth 
than a plump sparrow, and carries its head, when watching me, 
so low, that the line from its beak to the end of the tail seemed 
straight. Its song has much more melody than that of our 
mocking-bird, but not so varied nor so continuous. To me it is 
not so charming a singer as the little skylark. We have frequently 
watched one of these latter mounting in small spirals higher and 
higher until he was a mere speck upon the blue sky, all the time 
singing, and there, hanging on fluttering wing far above us, he 
would pour out his heart in a love-song so rollicking and joyous, 
yet so sweet, that one could not imagine a lady-lark enough 
prudish to say him nay. Why cannot some one get these gay 
little fellows to America ? I could even forgive the sparrow- 
importing fiend if he would teach the skylark to live and sing in 
our land. 

King George is even more democratic than was his deposed 
predecessor. He walks the streets like a simple citizen. We saw 
him and two of his children walking from the Acropolis. From 
what I could learn he is neither popular nor the opposite. The 
people feel for him absolute indifference. He and Queen Olga 
passed us on going to the station when departing for Corfu, where 
he has a residence. He touched his hat to every one; all lifted 
theirs, but then passed on as carelessly as if they cared not if he 
should prolong his absence of three months to as many years. 
He has the air of being a polished gentleman. I asked an intel- 
ligent man if the people liked his majesty. He shrugged his 
shoulders and replied : " They do not care a lepta for him. (The 
lepta is the tenth of a cent.) But they," he continued, " like his 
son, for he was born in Greece, and is a Greek in religion ; but to 
them the king is a Dane. We call him the ' Twirler.' " " Why ? " 
" Oh, because he is always twirling his cane." He is very youth- 
ful-looking, and the queen, though far inferior to charming Queen 
Amelia, is a fine-looking woman. 



322 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Athens is a delightful place for a winter and spring residence, 
and will ere long attract many students of Grecian literature and 
art. Already the American school is prosperous. When I was 
here before there was little or nothing of art except the ruins, but 
now, to my surprise, there is nearly as much of the fine and pure 
antique as in Rome. These have all been found by excavating 
within a few years, and are being added to constantly. Some 
good things have been found since we arrived. The Hermes of 
the museum, said to be a copy of that of Praxiteles, found and 
now at Olympia, is almost equal to the Apollo Belvidere. There 
are some relievos of life size found in the old cemetery, which show 
the ancient Greeks not only to have been heroes, but loving 
fathers and husbands. The favorite funeral memorial seems to 
have been a parting scene between the dead and his or her friends. 
The warm grasp of the hand, the sorrowful expression of the face^ 
and many little gestures of affection, show that in old Athens 
there was love about the hearthstone, and trusting confidence be- 
tween husband and wife which was never hinted at in their 
writings. There seems to have been a sort of reserve, which pre- 
vented the old Greek from exposing his home to the gaze of any 
but the most intimate. This feeling exists to-day in many parts 
of the East. Only the most intimate friendship permits a hint 
from one to another that either has a wife. A veil was, and is, 
spread over the fireside, which was only lifted by the angel of 
death. 

The question has been for ages asked : Was the art of the Gre- 
cian all his own, or did he borrow from another and improve upon 
it ? And if a borrower, whence ? His pride or vanity never con- 
fessed his indebtedness. He acknowledged only the gods as his 
creditors, and never seemed to feel to them any very weighty 
load of obligation. Jove was little more than an exalted Grecian,, 
and had Apollo appeared as a contestant in the Stadium, some 
Athenian would have entered the ring against him, and would 
have striven manfully to win the leafy crown. As we walked up 
to the Acropolis, we passed a clear little running fountain of 
never-failing pure water half-way up its sides. Whence came this 
water? Where is its real source ? This rock, with its many fis- 
sures, does not look as if it had any veins connecting with distant 
hills, and the platform above cannot catch and hold rain to supply 
a perennial spring. I asked these questions, and thought them 
kindred to the one : " Where was the source of Hellenic art?" 
When I went into the museum above, not. yet finished, in which 
are all antiquities excavated from the ruins on the Acropolis, I 
found the last question had been answered, by statues and sculp- 
tures lately exhumed. There were figures so thoroughly Egyp- 
tian that they would not cause surprise if seen in the oldest tomb 
on the Nile. There were others of the earlier archaic period, 
showing an advancement — a sort of marriage of Pharaohonic with 



ART TREASURES AND CHARAflNG EXCURSION'S. 323 

Grecian art. These statues are of the very earliest period of 
Hellenic antiquities. The late finds have been veritable treasures 
to the archaeologist. Some of the figures show, perhaps, the ear- 
liest attempt at sculpture in the land, when but little more was 
hoped for, or, perhaps, desired, than to portray the human form. 
As yet there was no conception that marble could portray thought 
except by the movements of the limbs. Almost step by step one 
can see in this museum the advance from the simple figure, until 
the brain, and finally the soul, was shown through the features, 
and the marble not only thought, but felt, and then the highest 
art was reached. 

About the time of my first visit here a German savant made 
the assertion that there were now no Greeks, but only Slavs. 
Full assent was given to the proposition, and men of letters have 
mourned that the blood of the heroes no longer flowed in man's 
veins. An opposite opinion is now taking strong hold here. 
Possibly the wish is father to the thought ; but it is not confined 
to the natives. Learned foreigners have adopted it, and adduce 
as proof of the proposition the theory of the survival of the fit- 
test. Whenever mind rubs against mind, and subtlety meets 
subtlety, they assert, the Greek wins. Throughout the Levant 
they say the Greek shows himself superior to others. They are 
the keenest traders and the most successful commercial men, and 
they confidently predict a renaissance in arts and letters under 
the glorious sun of this beautiful land. May it be so. I would 
like to live in the hope and die with the belief. 

This letter was dated at Athens, but I am finishing it at Con- 
stantinople. We had not the time to make any extended excur- 
sions, but did make some charming ones in the neighborhood of 
the city. We drove through large vineyards to Pentelicus, and 
then climbed its heights. I carried myself up with ease, but felt 
handicapped by my dead extra load of nearly forty pounds of fat. 
Though somewhat out of wind, I had enough left to revel in the 
glorious views. Marathon lay below us ; Eubcea and the other 
islands of the yEgean Sea lifted in splendid visions to the 
east and south. Attica, the sea, and Corinth in lofty heights, 
stretched to the east, while Boeotia and snow-clad Parnassus, in 
magnificent piles, towered at the north. We drove out to the 
beautiful bay of Eleusis, and wandered among its ruins, once the 
scene of the sacred mysteries, in company with a charming 
, daughter of the spotless confederate hero. We saw the Albanian 
peasant women, with ruddy fair cheeks, and sturdy forms clad in 
coarsely embroidered sacks, reaping their little harvests. Flocks 
of sheep and goats, with tinkling bells, made the mountain-sides 
musical, while they filled the air with sweet perfume as they 
lightly tripped through the wild thyme clothing the lower slopes 
in a mantle of green. In no land of the world "does the wild red 
poppy take so deep a dye or grow in such masses as in Greece. 



324 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Often there are seen whole acres as thickly covered as a tulip 
parterre with flowers of intensest crimson, so deep and yet so 
bright that they seemed to hold imprisoned sunlight, which flashes 
from their blood-red cups. The people claim that this intense 
hue comes from the blood of heroes which has moistened every 
foot of Grecian soil. 

We rode on the narrow-gauge railroad that winds in and out 
over lofty precipices, overhanging the Saronic Gulf, with the deep 
blue sea in gentle ripples far below us, and bold mountains high 
above us, to the little Isthmus of Corinth, which barely divorces 
the waters of the Italian Adriatic from the Grecian seas of the 
East. There we drove through rich vineyards of the grape 
which is called currant in commerce, to the oldest temple in the 
land, at the foot of the towering rock 1,900 feet high, on which is 
perched the Acro-Corinthus, the loftiest, and next to Gibraltar, 
the most impregnable fortified height in the world. Then we 
mounted sure-footed little horses, panoplied with pack-saddles, 
and rode up the giddy height. I had two, a light little mare and 
a yearling colt, which trotted and played by my side. The Alba- 
nian owner said that I was very heavy, and so he gave me the 
two. It was an odd joke, but I doubt if he saw it. We spent 
long hours on the summit. Flocks of long-wooled sheep and 
giddy goats grazed upon the sweet herbs about us, and wise- 
looking donkeys plucked thistles from the ruined walls. The 
huge cisterns, holding pure water enough for a small army, makes 
this spot a favorite pasturage for a hundred sheep and goats and 
a dozen or more cattle and donkeys. They come and go through 

strong gateway, in which hangs the old door armed with mas- 
sive nail-heads, once swinging to let in and out armed warriors, 
but now opening and shutting daily for gentle sheep and stolid 
asses — the variest step from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

The view from this famous hill is almost unequaled. To the 
north and south lay lofty mountains, pile upon pile — the most 
distant yet white with the winter's snows. Fifty odd miles to the 
east, over the blue Gulf, Pentelicus ended the vision, with Acro- 
polis distinct under the glass. The two mountain-girded gulfs 
came up and tried to meet in a kiss below us. Memories of long 
ago crowded upon us. Mountain and gorge, hill and steep 
slopes, little plains and blue seas were woven together in a web 
and a woof of story and of song — a song of heroic fortitude and 
glory, and a story of Moslem fanaticism and modern treachery. 
Nothing but memory and the old stone and mortar about us to 
remind us that this was the centre of a heroic past. I wondered 
if the canal, 100 feet deep and four miles long, now being cut 
across the isthmus, will again quicken the dead into life. That 
night, in the little town of New Corinth, I dreamed of battle and 
carnage, and woke to find myself in a very den of fleas. These 
brutes make me their chosen victim. Sometimes when they 



THE FUTURE OF GREECE. 325 

attack me where a brave man should never be struck, — in the 
broad back, where my finger-nails cannot reach — I am almost 
maddened. I shall carry scars for weeks. The pleasure of my 
journeyings in Egypt and Greece has been much lessened by the 
pests. It is singular that I should suffer so much while others 
scarcely feel them. I gained something that night, however, by 
their attack, for I felt the sharp shake of an earthquake, which I 
would have lost in sleep. I afterwards learned that they are of 
frequent occurrence along the Gulf of Corinth. The one I felt 
was a sharp, rapid, vibratory motion, and more distinct than any I 
ever felt before. Not a house in this locality but is cracked more 
or less. I think I should prefer to live where the Titans do not 
make their underground bed. 

Rome has revived into the strong kingdom of Italy. Can 
Greece follow her example? Though we may wish it, I fear I 
was wrong when I said I hoped for it. Is there a ground for that 
reasonable belief which constitutes hope ? She was once mighty, 
and controlled a large part of the world. But her power was 
not built upon labor. She won her wealth, if not her bread, 
with the sword. The reap-hook and the plow, the merchant ship 
and the workshop, man's labor kneaded into mother earth — 
these, not heroic actions, on the battle-field, are the foundation 
of power and wealth in these piping days of peace None of 
these are, or can be, within the grasp of a new Greece. Her 
mountains and steep valleys, and her pure air may make men of 
iron muscle ; her wonderful sky-lines and dimpled hill-sides ; 
her violet seas and purple heights, panoplied by golden clouds 
floating on opalescent skies — these may be the food of genius 
and foster poetry and art, but it is the spreading meadow, the 
great prairie, and the rich river valley waving in corn or golden 
in cotton bloom, the mountain heart, crystallized into iron or 
black in solid carbon ; the deep harbors leading into boundless 
seas which wash the shores of near and distant lands, — the nations 
which possess these, and they alone, can feed the world and 
clothe it, and be its carriers. Greece can barely feed herself, and 
from her own resources can weave for her people but scanty 
clothing. She cannot find in her mountains the ribs of mighty 
ships, nor the food for their hungry stomachs, nor do mighty oceans 
wash her shores, inviting her to trade with the world, now 100 
times larger than it was 20 odd centuries ago. A comparatively 
very small part of her area of 20,000 square miles is at all cultiva- 
ble, and of this a still smaller proportion is highly productive. 
The wheat is rather light, and the olive crop somewhat uncertain. 
The grape is of good quality, and of fair average yield, but often 
fails. 

The vine which produces the Zante currant, so valuable in com- 
merce, will fruit only in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Corinth. 
Transplanted elsewhere, it changes its nature, and produces a com- 



326 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

mon grape of inferior quality. It looks like the ordinary grape 
vine, and is, like the vine in all regular grape-growing countries, 
not permitted to run, but is cut in at about two and one half feet 
high. Generally the wine-producing vine is trimmed to half this 
height. I saw some of these latter near Athens, of great age and 
nearly a foot in diameter. Some of the olive trees, too, are very 
old — said to be over 2,000 years. They are ordinarily cut in, 
leaving the main trunk eight to ten feet high, and furnishing 
a smaller head than younger trees. The branches, however, being 
very thick, are productive. No other tree carries the appearance 
of old age so much as a gnarled old olive. It is twisted and 
deeply indented, has gnarled and tortuous branches, and, with its 
ash-colored leaf, is the very embodiment of hoary old age. From 
its trunk, indented and twisted as if in pain, the artist borrowed 
the idea of the old tree trunk for funeral monuments. Like the 
hills in this land of atmospheric effects, the olive foliage adapts 
its coloring to the character of the day, and to barometrical 
influence. One sees it now with a green, almost cheerful and 
bright, and then more sad, and again as if strewn with the ashes 
of despair. I suppose the condition of the air causes it now to 
show the top of the leaf, which is of pleasant green, and then the 
under side, which is almost white, or to blend them together. It 
is a pretty idea, however, that this tree, which in every land 
bathed by the Mediterranean is counted man's intimate and 
peculiar friend should, like the human heart, feel sad or cheerful, 
as the weather may be bright or sombre. In this land, as in so 
many we have lately visited, the woman and the ass or cow do 
more than their full share of peasant labors and drudgery. 

Although the wheat has not yet begun to yellow, it is being 
harvested. I was told it is because hired labor is scarce in Greece, 
and, therefore, the little farmers have to take time by the fore- 
lock. I suspect, however, it is to make the straw, the only fodder 
or hay here, more nourishing. In the villages the harvest is 
spread on the houses to dry. The reap-hook is very long, yet 
many of the reapers, both men and women, half squat when using 
it. The Albanians furnish quite a large percentage of the field- 
peasantry, and the Bulgarians the shepherds. All Grecians evince 
the old characteristics observed by St. Paul : " They run about to 
hear something new." In passing field or other laborers, they 
invariably paused to look at us, and when a train whirled by, all 
would stand up and watch it until out of sight. I like this. A 
rushing train of cars is a grand sight, and seems always to present 
a new form. The man who can let one pass and not give it a 
glance must be a slave to his work or akin to the ox of the field. 
I took a pleasure in India in the fact that the queer buffalo had a 
mind sufficiently inquiring always to look up with interest at a 
passing train. If a young one tossed its head I felt amused, but 
when one a hundred yards ofT deliberately turned and kicked 
squarely at us, he aroused a fellow-feeling in my breast. 



AN EXQUISITE FARE WE II SCENE. 327 

The wine of this country, while somewhat rough, is fruity and 
rich. The natives, however, do not drink it in its normal state. 
They put into their white-wine, resin from the Isthmian pine 
giving to the liquid a taste of sealing-wax. It is called " resinatta," 
and is drunk in large quantities. If I be not mistaken, the 
ancients had a like taste, which was mentioned in the grand 
poems. They use olive-oil largely, but I believe it is not of good 
quality. Their manner of curing the olive I like much better 
than the Spanish. The fruit is gathered ripe, and is cured in oil. 
It looks black and unsightly, but has a delightful flavor, and is 
decidedly health-giving. Being desirous of going up the Danube, 
and yet of reaching Italy before it becomes too warm, we were 
forced to leave Athens much sooner than we would have liked, 
and on the afternoon of the 29th, took the Khedive steamer for 
this place. We had a marvellous sunset, as we passed the fine 
■old temple ruin of Sunium, at Cape Colonnna, the southernmost 
point of Attica. 

A beautiful thing nearly always so impresses me that I 
am inclined to think it more beautiful than any thing before seen. 
I think I have seen a hundred sunsets finer than any preceding 
one. But the memory of this will always live with me as the 
paragon of all. The mountains to the west furnished a perfect 
•outline. The sky was beautifully blue above, running down 
through the whole range of opalescent tints to a brilliant gold. 
Short banks of clouds of purple, fringed with flame, stretched 
here and there near the sun, flanked by others, more or less cumu- 
lous, of purple bordered with orange-violet with pink borders, 
and of red-violet ; floating about, and between the drawn-out 
bands, were fleecy flecks of fire-clouds, almost dazzling, but dis- 
solving and melting away while the eye was trying to take them 
in. These cloud-forms and their colorings on the mother-of-pearl 
tinted sky, dissolved and took new shapes and tones so rapidly 
that the eye could scarcely take note of them before they were 
gone and were followed hy others differing from, but not less 
beautiful than those preceding. The western sky was a vast in- 
verted opal, as if one were at the heart of the gem, and were 
looking upon the fickle, magical hues of its cheek from within 
instead of from without. On a lofty rock promontory, projected 
over the sea, were the columns in white marble (all that is left) of 
the old ruins of Sunium, Parthena's most southern Attic home, 
reaching nearly up to the mountain's sky-line, and resting upon its 
purple-gray side as a background directly below the point where 
the sun had gone under. Old memories were woven into the 
living picture, which was beautiful beyond description — painfully 
T^eautiful. Thus, one is often affected, when looking upon a 
thing of beauty so transcendant that the brain seems powerless to 
:grasp it and speak of it to the heart, or when the heart becomes 
so full that the head is unable to give it full sympathy. This 
isunset under old Sunium was full of deep pathos, fitting picture 



328 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

for memory to recall as the parting scene of this storied land ; 
this land so little yet so grand, whose men walked the ground in 
the form of gods ; whose genius was plucked from the eternal 
stars ; where poetry was a living thing and art hovered over the 
every-day home. Wonderful land ! A speck upon the earth, yet 
the story of its deeds will roll over the world's plains, and be echoed 
from its hills, until history shall turn to tradition and tradition 
itself shall become dumb. 

We stood upon the deck of our little ship, and looked long 
toward the west. The sun went down over the mountains and 
sank to his rest. Shadows gathered over the hills and night fell 
upon the sea. With a sigh, I bade a long farewell, a final good- 
by to Greece. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

COSMOPOLITAN CONSTANTINOPLE— BEAUTIFUL APPROACH— CUS- 
TOM HOUSE— SOLOMON AND HIS TRIBE— DOGS— ST. SOPHIA— 
BAZAARS— THE SALAAM-LICK— THE TIMID SULTAN— DER- 
VISHES— THE BOSPHORUS— WONDERFUL PANORAMA. 

Consta?iti)jople, May lo, 1888. 

If one will spread before him a map of the eastern hemisphere 
he will observe that nearly all the land lies in the northern half, 
and that it is one mighty continent, divided arbitrarily by 
geographers into three divisions, but by nature into only two. 
Cut out from the map this vast continent, and try to balance it on a 
pin for a pivot. The centre of gravity will we found to be not far 
from the southern end of the Caspian Sea. If the card-board map 
be as hard there as the land of that region is sterile, the pin will not 
enter it, just as the plow and the hoe cannot penetrate the surface 
of those desert regions of Persia. If the paper partakes of the 
character of the country delineated upon it, the nearest point the 
pin will enter will be in Western Asia Minor; for there the near- 
est cultivable land will be found, and there, too, is approximately 
the centre of the productiveness of the hemisphere. There, 
moreover, will be found the centre of a mighty system of water 
which permeates throughout this vast tripartite continent. It is 
not too fanciful to call this the arterial system of the old world, 
with Byzantium the heart and the Bosphorus the aorta, which 
flows out into the Mediterranean, along the western shore of 
Asia, along and into northern and central Africa; along and up 
into the gardens and vineyards of Europe ; over the sandy 
reach of the Suez into the Red Sea and the world of water, and 
the lands of fabled treasures beyond ; and through the Black 
Sea, and splashing over into the Caspian and upon the Aral, up 
into the vast grain and cattle regions watered by the rivers flow- 
ing into these seas. 

If there be a spot in Europe, Asia, or Africa, designed by nature 
for the imperial heart of the old world, it would seem that the 
Byzantium-Constantinople is the one. A cursory view of the 
map and a very slight knowledge of the productiveness of the 
lands into whose fibres the pulsations of the Bosphorus can 
throw the quickening blood and draw back repayment, will con- 
vince any one of this fact. A walk through this city — meeting 
peoples from all these regions, here domiciled as if to the manor 

329 



330 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

born, is only a sharp emphasis of the evidence given by the map. 
The untravelled American sees people drawn from many climes, 
but they have become almost immediately Americans. One who 
traverses the streets of New York or London, where are men of all 
lands retaining their native characteristics, and sees them all only 
as sojourners. But here one meets people in colonies, in squads 
and groups, each group differing from all others, yet all seem- 
ingly at home and evidently feeling that this city belongs to them 
and they to it. Here one jostles against groups of Englishmen as 
thoroughly English as if living within the sound of Bow bells ; 
Frenchmen, who look as if they sipped their coffee and absinthe 
every evening on the boulevards ; Germans who have just blown 
the cream from their lager ; Italians, who are happy on a frugal 
meal of macaroni ; Levantine Greeks, noisy and full of swagger 
and bad wine ; Arabs, stately and dignified, conscious that they 
alone have the right to cry " Illaha-il Allah " ; Armenians with 
long noses patterned after a vulture's beak, who can give a Jew two 
in five and win every time ; Albanians, whose bed-fellows are their 
swords and daggers, and who think a fight in the dark more agree- 
able than a feast ; Tripolitans, who wear green turbans, claiming 
to be the real descendants of the prophet, and pining for battle 
in his cause; Turkomans and Kurds, who claim for their country 
the land they can see beneath the vault of the sky ; Africans 
from south of the Sahara and about the springs of the Nile, who 
wear slashes and gashes for jewels, and consider long scars on 
their cheeks their gems ; Bulgarians, heavy and stupid, whose 
every breath is a hurricane of garlic, and Russians, whose dream 
is that the Greek cross may supplant the cresent on St. Sophia's 
dome. 

All these various peoples are met with in other cities, but one 
meeting them at once recognizes the fact that they are in them, 
but not of them ; here, however, they seem at home and as much 
of the place as are the Turks themselves. No distinctions are 
made among men because of race, previous condition, or color. 
A German is at the head of the army, and Woods Pasha, an 
Englishman, will probably fill the place of Hobart Pasha at the 
head of the navy. A Greek is the Sultan's physician, and is said 
to wield vast influence over him. An African, whose blue-black 
face has three broad gashes on each cheek, is in command of a 
regiment, and the army is of every hue, from fairest white to 
sooty black. The locality teaches that all men are akin, and a 
prayer uttered with the face turned toward Mecca smooths down 
the steps leading to the most exalted positions. 

Mutterings are constantly heard throughout Europe to-day, 
beneath the ground and over it, threatening war and the dread 
carnage which must follow, and men and women are kept in con- 
stant fear. When the great emperor, whose fiat crystallized so 
many petty German states into one mighty Teutonic empire. 



GLORIOUS, IGNOBLE STAMBOUL. 331 

was lying upon his iron bedstead listening bravely for the tap of 
the drum which was to call him to the ranks of the mighty dead, 
men instead of thinking of his glorious career and preparing to 
drop a tear upon his casket, were looking toward San Remo and 
watching the horizon to see whether a bright sky laden with 
peace was to come up from Italy, or a lurid cloud reeking with 
war was to roll over Europe ; and all because of Constantinople 
and the Bosphorus. 

Wise statesmen are closeted with each other studying the 
world's map, and with heads bent close together, fix their eyes 
all in one little focus — Seraglio Point, where the Golden Horn 
brings down the "sweet waters of Europe," to pour them into 
the wonderful salt river rushing between Stamboul and Scutari. 
Shallow-pated wiseacres discuss in flowing periods that all-talked- 
of and little-understood problem, " the Eastern Question," and 
glibly declare who should own Constantinople. For 2,500 
years the eyes of all civilization have been turned upon 
this spot, and yet not a single deed was ever performed here 
which was fairly entitled to be spread upon the page of history. 
Here, close by, the searchers for the Golden Fleece moored their 
ships when Greece w^as the home of mythical demi-gods. Here 
the dread Macedonian monarch was forced to cry halt. Here, 
over 2,000 years ago, the vast hordes of Asia were compelled 
to bend aside their steps, and long centuries afterward the 
crescent was baffled, on its world-conquering march by the 
green waters of a stream but little over a half-mile wide. Here 
100,000 old men, women, and children, begged for bread, when 
they could go no farther on their weary pilgrimage to the holy 
sepulchre. Here soldiers under the banner of the cross, slaugh- 
tered the followers of Christ, and again, after a few centuries, 
Christian blood flowed in rivers, and Christian women and chil- 
dren by the thousands marched mournfully into slavery, when 
Mohammed H., stained with his bloody hand St. Sophia's alabas- 
ter column. Toward this spot, and for this spot, mighty armies 
have marched and vast fleets have sailed, within the present half 
century, and fought great battles, but not upon its waters or 
near its limits. Within a few hundred acres, not far from where 
I write, crimes, silent, dark, and bloody, in vast numbers, but all 
unrecorded, have been perpetrated, enough to make the very 
name of man a stench in the nostrils of angels, and yet not a 
single act of individual heroism, no sublime performance by 
masses, was ever recorded as done within or under Stamboul's 
walls. Beautiful city, the heart of the third of the world, with 
an existence of nearly 3,000 years, the seat of empire for 15 cen- 
turies, the witness of untold crimes, and with chronicles without 
number, and yet having no history, for her deeds have not been 
worthy of record, a city whose name is " linked with no virtue 
and ten thousand crimes" ! 



332 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Under Sunium's old ruin we bade adieu to Greece, on our way 
here. The next morning's dawn found us under " the home of 
the bhnd old man of Scio's rocky isle," the island an earthquake 
so fearfully desolated four or five years ago. We then steamed 
up Smyrna's gulf, with pretty mountains on our right, and to our 
left a plain flecked with huge pyramids of salt — salt enough to 
make a sea briny. Here this necessary article is manufactured by 
a Turkish monopoly and is piled in mountains, from which ships 
load from year to year, without apparently lessening the heaps. 
Smyrna is a thoroughly Oriental city of 200,ooo population, has a 
fine bazaar, and a magnificent view from a castle, an old ruin 
perched on a hill, just back of the town. So insecure is the 
country, however, owing to brigandage, that we were warned not 
to go beyond the hill. Foreigners are not infrequently picked up 
and held for ransom. 

Early morning found us nearly into the Dardanelles. The view 
was pretty. High hills or low mountains prettily clothed in their 
spring garments of green were on either hand. There was a sweet 
freshness in this we had not seen for a yean For many months 
the green of all plants has been often rich, but lacking that fresh 
tint which so cheers the eye in the early offerings of the year. 
The day was cold and damp. Perhaps it was this which prevented 
much enthusiasm when we looked upon the great mounds mark- 
ing the graves of Achilles and Ajax. I never could rave about 
the mighty deeds under Ilium's walls. The whole thing always 
appeared to me a sort of tempest in a tea-pot — a huge buffo-farce. 
Achilles was a bragging, handsome Buffalo Bill, and Ajax an an- 
cient John Sullivan, who let out left-handers with sledge-hammer 
force, and was the admiration of the heirs-apparent and of Helen 
peeping from behind latticed windows. Homer was a blind old 
Gilbert and Sullivan, singing from city to city, and begging back- 
shish in copper and half-done sheep's meat. 

I did not catch now our first view of Stamboul with the en- 
thusiasm I felt 36 years ago. I recall how it then seemed to lift 
from the sea as a fairy city — it had a cardboard lightness, with its 
rounded domes and tall minarets and palaces perched on wooded 
hills, all lighted by a sun coming up from the east warm and un- 
veiled by a single cloud. I had then been in the saddle for 
months, on hot plains and under a burning midsummer sun, and 
had sailed from the foot of Olympus under Broussa the evening 
before in a caique of eight oars. We had slept soundly on our 
rugs spread on its bottom all night, and found ourselves at day- 
break on an island, within sight of Constantinople. There we 
breakfasted on sardines taken fresh from a fishing boat and broiled 
on a mass of coals from burnt brush. It was a delicious breakfast 
for us and the crew. Then, with our prow pointed towards St. 
Sophia's dome, we rowed and revelled in the beautiful picture 
growing out of the sea. I remember we looked and looked and 



THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. MY CIGARS. 12,2, 

scarcely spoke, and when we did it was in short ejaculations or 
murmurs of delight. Taylor and I were both young then, 
and filled with hopes as swelling as the domes before us, and as 
heaven-directed as the minarets in sight. He has gone to mingle 
with the eternal dead, and I am fast reaching the great shore line 
dividing the land of the past from the trackless ocean of the 
boundless hereafter. Then the sky was rosy bright, laughing in 
triumph at yesternight. But now — it is the last day of April, 
cold, drizzling, and dreary, fitting anniversary to me of one of the 
dies irce of remorseless fate. 

Though the day was to me so sad a one and so dreary, yet 
Stamboul arose before us in a wondrous beauty all its own. 
We have all seen the conception of the artist of " Excelsior," 
where the hopeful youth sees a city sitting in dreamy light in a 
world of fleecy cloud. This gives a sort of idea of this city, seen 
from the sea. Our ship bent into the Bosphorus — 300 and odd 
feet of water so deeply green that most people call it blue. We 
looked over upon the old gardens of the Serai, now a half wilder- 
ness of neglected trees and green vegetable plats. Shutting it 
partly in, arose the lofty walls rising out of the water. There was 
the gate through which many a beauty, tied in a sack, has been 
quietly thrust, and silently sunken in her watery grave ! Steamers 
were plying in great numbers on the stream, and light caiques 
were darting about us by the hundreds. We turned into the 
Golden Horn, among a dozen or more steamers, and were soon 
surrounded by hotel runners and boatmen. Surrendering our- 
selves, we were quickly on Turkish soil, and very nasty soil it 
is in this capital. The nastiness of her streets on rainy days is 
superlative. 

At the custom-house I forgot to give backshish to the solemn 
Turk who examined our traps. On the very top was my last box 
of Trichy cigars. He informed me that I was fined 40 piasters 
($2), for bringing in tobacco. With a rueful face I paid the fine, 
and reached for my smokers. He quickly wrapped them in a red 
handkerchief, and said they were forfeited. This was more than 
my free Yankee blood could stand. I am afraid I forgot myself 

and said " it." I hope I did not, for I have grown pious since 

I quit associating with "newspaper fellers." But I know I 
solemnly asseverated that I would not buy a pipeful of tobacco or 
a rug in the Sultan's dominions, and would wipe his mud from my 
feet as quickly as possible. 

We found the great hotels full. We went to the Little Bellevue. 
I mention it particularly, so that some one reading this may re- 
member it. The view from its windows over the deep valley, along 
the Horn, and upon the picturesque-looking houses on the green 
hills in the distance, was simply superb, and the cuisine capital. 
Determined to quit the town as soon as possible, we commenced 
our sight-seeing. We found ourselves upon the great broad, low 



334 ^ RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

bridge leading from Pera over to Stamboul. This bridge is one of 
the most interesting things in the city ; about a quarter of a mile 
long and at least 60 feet wide, it is covered from early morn till 
dark, with a moving mass of more various people than can be 
seen together anywhere else on earth. Every nationality, every 
color and complexion, every form and fashion of dress, men, 
women, and children, speaking as many tongues as caused Babel's, 
tower to halt in its upward growth ; dashing ofificers in gold braids 
and decorations ; European ladies in Parisian costumes ; Arabs in 
burnoose, and Armenians in caftans, fat, well-fed Turks; and beg- 
gars so fearfully maimed and disfigured that they ceased to be ob- 
jects of pity, so horribly repulsive were they ; army horses career- 
ing, and patient donkeys plodding. 

While we were trying to understand how much we were to pay 
toll, an unkempt old chap took my money from my hand, paid the 
toll, got back the change, and handed it to me, telling in fair 
English that the toll was for each a quarter of a piaster. I noticed 
that he had given a piaster and a quarter, whereas my party was 
only four. He had paid for himself. This was our introduction 
to Solomon, the Son of David, the brother of Abraham and of 
Isaac and of Jacob, and the father of five sons. From that mo- 
ment the love of Solomon and of his family for us surpassed the 
love of woman. It mattered not where we were, morning, noon, 
or evening during our twelve days' stay, Solomon or some of his 
family were sure to meet us, or to be somewhere near. If we 
looked about inquiringly, as if seeking some unfound place, one 
of the Solomon family was at our elbow to tell us where we ought 
to go ; if we hailed a caique, Solomon's son arose from the salt 
water to interpret for us, and to settle the price ; if we called a 
horse boy to bargain for a ride, Abram rose from beneath a pav- 
ing-stone to make a good contract for us and to mount one of the 
horses as our guide. When we were through with an excursion^ 
Solomon, or Solomon's brother, or Solomon's son, prevented us 
from being cheated, and took whatever we offered for his services 
with cheerful thanks. If we gave five francs for a half day's work 
to one of them, he took it for his own. If we handed him a 
franc, saying it was all we had, he thanked us without a murmur. 
Among them they spoke all languages, — one good English, an- 
other good French, another good Russian, all good Turkish, and 
all enough English to understand, and make us understand a lit- 
tle. The most remarkable peculiarity of these sons of Israel was 
the extraordinary manner in which they accidently got into the 
neighborhood of the shop of some Hebrew dealers in carpets or 
some other things usually dear to the traveller's heart. They did 
not lead us, or seemed to care that we should go into these 
places. There was a sort of attraction between us when with 
Solomon and the houses of his people. Ah ! Solomon, I shall 
never forget you, nor Isaac, nor Abram, nor Jacob. You led our 



SOLOMON AND HIS TRIBE. 335 

feet into pleasant places, and your ways were ways of peace. But 
you did not get a piece of any dollar we paid for rugs and em- 
broideries, for you helped us to bring down prices in every in- 
stance. You simply loved us, Solomon, because we were young 
men so far from home ! Walking with Solomon, our feet got 
over the threshold of the house of David — David Levy, and there 
was the wealth of the whole land of the sheep and of the goat and 
of the camel. I told David I had sworn not to buy a thing in 
Turkey. It mattered not. He simply liked to show his goods, 
and he did show them, and my heart yearned for the wool of the 
sheep that looked like the silk of the worm. 

I told our consul of my trouble. He said he thought his drago- 
man might make the authorities undo the wrong done me, and, be- 
sides, the principle ought to be settled for future travellers, that 
they may enter a limited number of foreign cigars on payment of 
duty, and I also got the thanks of the consul for pressing the 
matter. Result : I got back my cigars, and all of my money ex- 
cept one and a half francs duty, and I sent a box of David Levy's 
rugs to Chicago ; and Solomon is the friend of David. 

Solomon is an institution of Constantinople, — so are the dogs. 
Fifty-three I counted on a narrow street in a walk of 1 10 yards, 
and it was not a good day nor a good neighborhood for dogs. 
They were everywhere, — in the gutters, in the middle of the 
streets, against the house-walls, between our legs, and under our 
horse's feet — and such dogs ! All fox-eyed, all dirty, all lean, 
and nearly all mangy. Some have their tails on their backs, but 
the majority carry them low, almost between their legs. They 
can sleep anywhere ; no noise awakes them ; but the crack of a 
coachman's whip makes them even when asleep get two inches 
beyond a carriage-wheel. They are either asleep in your way 'as 
as you walk, or they are lighting between your legs. A dogtrots 
along a street, he looks sheepish, as if he felt himself engaged in 
a mean business ; another dog attacks him ; they snap and bite. 
After a while one gets the other down, and looks as if he is about 
to choke him to death. Just as the bottom dog is about to give 
a last gasp, some third dog takes the top one by the leg, then a 
fourth comes in, and a fifth takes a hand ; probably a dozen are 
soon engaged. I have watched them, and it seemed every dog 
was going for every other dog, — a regular Kentucky free fight. 
I invariably saw it through. There is a fascination in a dog-fight. 
The acknowledgment is shocking, I know, but the statement is 
true. Sometimes all will be on one until he is limp, and then 
those that had finished him go for each other. The cause of 
nearly all the fights is that certain dogs claim a certain set of 
streets or blocks, and another set have another locality. Woe to 
the dog that goes beyond his bounds, even by the width of a nar- 
row street. When one does and gets into a fight, all the dogs of 
the two adjoining colonies are apt to get into the row, and when 



336 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the battle grows fast and furious, and a dog feels teeth in his 
haunches, he goes for the nearest, whether friend or foe. They 
frequently get killed. We saw one behind the rail of St. Sophia's 
yard laid out dead. He would have been torn to pieces but for a 
" mullah " (priest) who drove the victor off. A dog always goes over 
his bounds with a hang-dog look. He knows his danger. Yet, for 
love or for a bone, he does what many a man does — takes a chance. 

Blacque Bey, so many years Turkish Minister at Washington, 
lives with his wife and beautiful daughter in the Bellevue. He is 
president of the Pera municipality, — nearly the same thing as a 
mayor. He is a great friend of the pariah dog, and declares that 
all the dogs about the municipality recognized the fact when he 
was made president ; that they at once paid him great deference, 
and when he Avent toward the city building they followed him in 
most respectful manner. Not long since a dog bit the Russian 
Ambassador. He demanded that Blacque Bey should kill him. He 
inquired into the matter, and found the Russian had trodden on 
the dog's tail, and decided the dog was justified. I suggested that 
it was evident the Turkish dog had more sympathy for a French- 
man than for a Russian. Blacque is of French blood. His wife 
laughed, but her husband was silent. The Turks are wonderfully 
guarded to say nothing of the Russians. I was told that the city 
was full of Russian spies in every locality, and that the Turks were 
in constant fear of them. 

As in all other Levantine cities, the donkey plays his part and 
performs more than his allotted work. He is the baker's wagon 
and the itinerant peddler. Huge panniers are swung over his 
back, and he faithfully trudges from house to house with the 
staff of life. Each housekeeper who can purchase on weekly or 
monthly payments has a square stick given her. On this the 
bread-man cuts a notch for each loaf delivered. When the stick 
is filled he simply cuts it down, taking out the notches, and a 
new bread-book is thus opened. The donkey, too, is the lumber- 
wagon ; joists of all lengths, scantlings, and boards are loaded 
upon the little fellow lengthwise, so that the forward ends meet 
or cross over his head, and the diverging ends behind come close 
to or drag, wide apart, on the ground. Often these rear ends are 
six and eight feet apart, and as the donkey bends about the 
crooked streets threaten the shins of the pedestrian in a fearful 
manner. A train of 20 to 30 of these lumber-carriers coming 
down grade, and forcing the people to hug closely the walls or 
dodge into doorways, is an amusing sight. But one never sees 
any one angry at the shifts they are put to to save themselves. 
The living along narrow, crowded streets makes every one ready 
for the " give and take in life," which may be called one of its 
best philosophies. 

Horses, too, are used for pack-carriers. They carry the grain 
and flour from one part of the city to another. The donkeys are 



THE BAZAAR. 337 

co-laborers, however, in this. Flour is distributed from the mills 
to the bakers in huge, square, curiously-tied bags. At certain 
hours trains of horses and donkeys are seen in dozens, fifties, and 
hundreds about the grain and flour bazaars. All parts of streets 
devoted to special trades or to any vending purposes, are in the 
East called bazaars. The " shoe bazaar," the " Greek bazaar," 
the " silk bazaar," and so on through the whole list of trades, and 
of nationalities are spoken of constantly. But in Stamboul there 
is one locality called " the bazaar^ It is of great extent, cover- 
ing many acres, 25 upward. The bazaar consists of a large num- 
ber of narrow streets, with shallow shops on either side, supported 
by columns or pillars, and covered overhead to a large extent by 
successions of small domes generally glazed. When the sun is 
high matting is more or less spread over the glazed portions of 
the streets and over the roof and domes. These little streets are 
thus shaded and tolerably well protected from rains, and being on 
up-and-down ground, and having many columns, some in double 
and others in triple rows, with the small shops displaying a great 
variety of wares and goods — silks, calicoes, and carpets — running 
largely to gaudy colors; the shopkeepers in various costumes, 
bright girdles, and brilliant red fezes ; and crossing each other at 
every kind of angle, with the soft light coming through domes 
and queer roofs, are wonderfully picturesque. Here one can 
purchase any thing and every thing, and get fairly cheated too. 
Shopkeepers ply the foreigner with invitations to look at their 
stuffs. " Come in, sir. This is the place you want." Another : 
" Here, effendi, other fellows cheat you. I sell cheap. I cheap 
John. Melkin all buy from me," and so on. A constant fire is 
kept up as you stumble along, for your eyes are so attracted by 
the bright, pretty shops — all open — that your feet get independ- 
ent and are apt to take an elevation. Generally, certain streets 
or localities are devoted to particular trades. Now you are 
among carpet dealers, then among silk and embroidery dealers. 
Men do their work in the front of their cupboard-like shops, 
working with their hands and steadying a part of their machinery 
with their toes. The foot helps the hand throughout the East. 
A whole section is given to furniture dealers, and a table or chair 
is being made on the edge of the street before the shop. Then 
another locality is occupied by brass-workers. Men are hammer- 
ing brass into cups or plates, and close by others are heating the 
plates or bowls and zincking or leading them so that they shine 
like silver. A man who delights to watch men finds food for 
many thoughts, and finds whiling-away places for many an 
hour. 

The Turk, as an aggregation, is a very sick man, and but little 
fitted for this age and for his position so close to western activity. 
He cannot remain much longer on the Bosphorus. The world 
wants it, the West demands it. The only question is wko shall 



338 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

take it ; each people is afraid to let the other in. But for that 
the Turk would be now packing up and moving eastward. When 
he is gone the western traveller will have lost much of the pictu- 
resque, for the go-ahead ideas of the West cannot stop to preserve 
it. I wish all nations could come to an agreement and make a 
" free city on the Bosphorus," free to all the world. I would 
even be willing that Uncle Sam should sail in his chip. 

Under the auspices of our polite Secretary of Legation, Mr. King, 
we went with several dozen others of our countrymen to witness 
the Sultan's progress to his mosque. He performs this ceremony 
every Friday as the head of the faithful. Travellers are given a 
large room in a handsome building fronting Hamidie Mosque, close 
to Yieldiz Kiosk, the palace in which the Sultan resides. There 
were over lOO strangers present, some of them very distinguished 
people, with the secretaries of their respective embassies. As our 
minister was not present, Mr. King adroitly smuggled me into a 
separate small room, reserved for the diplomats, in which there 
were only a half dozen. There I had a fine view of the brilliant 
ceremony. Regiment after regiment — 7,000 soldiers in all — came 
with full bands and stationed themselves around the large square 
enclosing the mosque. They were handsomely uniformed and 
marched admirably, and were a splendid body of men. I never 
saw any troops in any land surpass two regiments of cavalry, or, 
perhaps, more properly called, mounted infantry. The men were 
fine, bold-looking fellows, and the horses very good, some of those 
ridden by the ofificers being superb. The street from the palace, 
200 yards off, and the court of the mosque were kept sanded and 
raked down. Fully an hour was consumed in marching the vari- 
ous regiments into position and getting every thing ready for the 
mighty head of the church throughout Mohammedan lands. 

When all was in readiness a ringing shout went up from all the 
soldiers, apparently most hearty, and a large number of ofificers, 
in gorgeous uniforms, appeared on foot, followed by six superb, 
pure-blooded Arabian horses, under saddle, led by splendid 
grooms. Following the riderless horses came a victoria, drawn 
by two noble white Arabian stallions. In this open carriage the 
Sultan came from the palace in simple sable-lined caftan and red 
fez. He saluted with a wave of his hand those at the windows 
of the diplomatic room and the strangers in the large room. At 
the steps of the mosque he alighted and ascended alone over a 
rich carpet. 

The Muezzim from the minaret called the faithful to prayer. 
While the ruler remained in the mosque, which was near an hour, 
delicious coffee, tea, and cigarettes were served to the hundred or 
more strangers, and the soldiers stood at rest. Then a large and 
finely drilled band mounted a terrace near the mosque, and one 
by one, in quick step, the regiments passed before a window in 
which the Sultan stood. This was a splendid pageant. When all 



THE SULTAN OF TURKEY. 339 

had passed, the Sultan's mother came out of the mosque, and as 
her carriage drove by, she threw money to poor people who were 
beyond one of the files of soldiery. Then the Sultan came and 
entered an open vehicle, and taking the reins, drove himself back 
to the palace surrounded by crowds of ofificers, running before and 
about the carriage. 

Again, in passing, the ruler gave a very cordial salute to our 
windows. While the soldiers were marching before him a couple 
of aides came to say that the Sultan sent his compliments to the 
distinguished strangers who paid this mark of respect to the re- 
ligious ceremony of the " Salaam-lick." And sometime later 
another aide-de-camp came into the room I was in and said that 
" the Sultan had inquired who we were, and on learning our names, 
thanked us for coming to thus honor this holy ceremony," or 
something to that effect. I rather doubted that this latter special 
message had been sent, but I afterwards met the aide and was in- 
formed that my card with my past position had been sent in to 
the chamberlain by our Secretary of Legation ; that the sultan had 
asked who occupied the diplomatic window ; that this and the 
Earl of Clarendon's card had been handed him, and he then sent 
the message. 

The Sultan is a small, slight man, very thin, and wearing a care- 
worn, haggard look. He is said to be very timid, and, owing to 
some prophecy, is in constant fear that he will be assassinated, 
and by a stranger. He regulates his every action by the con- 
junctions of the planets ; keeps ambassadors frequently awaiting 
an audience for weeks because of some baleful crossing of star- 
lines. I heard of an amusing evidence of his nervous alarm when 
Lew Wallace was our minister, and which the minister of 
course could not tell. It was when the British fleet was occu- 
pying a threatening position off Alexandria. The Sultan asked 
him to induce the United States to propose to mediate, and thus 
prevent bloodshed. The minister telegraphed to the govern- 
ment at Washington, got its consent, and then presented the 
matter to Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador, who could not 
decline. But the prevention of bloodshed was not what England 
wanted. So the wily earl quietly cabled the British admiral that 
he would do well to fire a shot, and thus set the ball in motion, 
before his government could hear of the proposed mediation. 
The shot was fired, and after midnight the Turkish ruler, hearing 
of it, hurried an officer off to bring our minister post-haste to the 
palace. Wallace rushed off, half dressed, brushing his hair as he 
rode, and found the Sultan in a state of fearful trepidation. The 
pallid ruler informed him of what had happened and asked him 
what he was to do. The blunt Republican scratched his head a 
moment and then replied: " There is but one thing to be done, 
and that your majesty should do at once." The grateful Turk 
asked what it was. " Your majesty should place yourself at the 



340 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

head of the army in person, and proceed immediately to Egypt." 
The poor monarch came very near swooning. 

There are three regular Sundays in Constantinople— Friday for 
the Mohammedans, Saturday for the Jews, who keep it in most 
orthodox sacredness, and Sunday for the Christians; of the latter 
the Greeks and Armenians are the greatest in numbers ; I think, 
over 400,000. 

Travellers go on Friday to see the dancing and howling 
Dervishes. The latter is an English misnomer. They are a sect 
called Heurleurs. One of their ceremonies is a ritual by a mullah, 
responded to by the brothers and worshippers, who, as they re- 
spond, sway themselves, while standing in line, from one side to 
the other and jerking the head, all the while uttering the name 
of Allah in some prayerful phrase. As their fervor increases the 
sideway motion becomes more and more extended and the head- 
jerking more and more rapid, until they appear to be almost in a 
species of fit. This action is continued for nearly an hour. The 
sweat pours from their faces, and their heads look as if they would 
be jerked off. As the fervor increases one by one of the audience 
join the line. When we were present a coal-black Ethiopian, an 
officer of the army, put on the robe. He was a splendid specimen 
of manhood, and threw his whole soul into the thing. Sweat 
rolled from his ebon cheeks, and at times his head really looked 
as if it would leave his shoulders. Each motion drew from him 
the prayer to Allah in convulsive grunts. An American lady 
present became quite excited. I thought I saw her features 
twitch in involuntary nervous sympathy. After this ritual is over 
many of the faithful, and many children who are more or less sick, 
lie prone upon the floor, and the head mullah, or priest, walks over 
them, treading upon each, and then one by one blows upon their 
faces, when they go off happy, if not cured. Babies in arms are 
simply blown upon and touched. The worshippers seem most 
intense in their devotion, and solemn in its performance. 

The dancing or whirling Dervishes, after praying for, say half 
an hour with many prostrations, then range themselves around a 
circular floor in the centre of the mosque and listen to a peculiar 
music performed by a part of their order, and to a litany read by 
their high priest, all the time marching in single file around the 
outer circle, each bowing low, when opposite and farthest from 
the " mecca " of the mosque — that is, the part corresponding to 
the altar in a Christian church, and always on the side of the 
building pointing to the holy city of Mecca, and when on the 
circle next to the mecca, each one with a peculiar step, turns and 
faces the brother next following him, and each bowing low one to 
the other ; as this part of the ceremony progresses, the music be- 
comes more fervid, when, one by one, the Dervishes will begin to 
spin around as on a pivot, and at the same time ciraling around 
the room. Each one spins more or less rapidly, as he may choose, 



EASTER SUNDAY. 341 

but all go around the room in the same period, and all extend their 
arms straight out as they thus waltz. Their dress is a high, coni- 
cal cap, and a long, full skirt coming to the feet and bound in at 
the waist. As they spin the skirt extends in proportion to the 
speed of their motion — that of those moving very rapidly taking 
the form of a widely extended funnel. I counted the revolutions 
of one of the worshippers. It was 58 in the minute. This 
motion he kept up for perhaps a half hour, and when stopping 
showed no sign of dizziness. There were 30 odd on the floor at 
once, but only one moved with this great rapidity. Two of 
them were young novitiates, somewhere from ten to twelve years 
of age. The whole thing proceeded with great solemnity and 
decorum, and all seemed fervid and earnest. 

On Easter Sunday we went to the fine ceremony in the Metro- 
politan Greek Church in Stamboul. The patriarch and bishops 
marched in exquisite and very rich robes, all with brilliant caps, 
that of the patriarch being of wonderful richness and beauty. 
The church was painfully packed, the people swaying back and 
forth from the pressure and movement of the outer lines. The 
ambassadors of the countries adhering to the Greek faith were 
present in their full court dresses, in seats next the altar. One of 
their dragomen, seeing us in the swaying mass, worked his way 
to us, and, extricating us, got us prominent seats. A part of the 
ceremony was the reading, in twelve different languages, the story 
of the reappearance of Christ to his disciples and the doubts of 
Thomas. After the ceremony was over the favored guests were 
conducted to a hall in the Metropolitan building, adjoining the 
church. Into this the patriarch and the bishops then came, and 
his holiness, holding a golden cross, gave his hand to be kissed by 
the believers, saying something to each as they did so, and giving 
to each beautifully gilded and dyed Easter-eggs tied in a piece of 
muslin. To the principal guests he gave four eggs, to all others 
three. After the grandees and their ladies had kissed his hand, I 
got to him and asked in French that an American might be per- 
mitted to pay his respects. He had in his hand a bundle of three 
eggs to give me, but he at once reached back and got one of 
four, and gave them to me with some kindly spoken words, which 
I could not understand, for they were in Greek. 

I had some most agreeable interviews with our accomplished 
minister, Mr. Straus, whose mugwump proclivities do not prevent 
his being a most industrious representative of our government 
and a most popular gentleman with all visiting Americans. Mrs. 
Straus is greatly admired, and entertains beautifully. She honored 
us by giving us a dinner, and afterward having us at an evening 
reception. 

I have spoken of Constantinople as the imperial heart of a 
mighty continent, but now I would, if I had the power, paint it 
in its beauty — the jewel of the world. Nature was in high revelry 



342 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

when she conceived its site, and the genius of beauty, drunken 
with ravishing dreams, was handmaiden at its birth. All of 
nature's treasures were ransacked for material to build it, and not 
a color was lacking on the palette from which it was painted as it 
grew. Mountains were dwarfed into hills for its foundations — 
hills retaining all the bold outlines and picturesque contour of 
mountains. Seas were spun into rivers and woven into its struc- 
ture — sea-rivers of vast depth and so darkly green that they look 
like liquid emeralds thrown into deep shadow; while the hills are 
so bright that they seem carpeted with emerald velvet bathed in 
a flood of sunlight. Not exhausted by her work when the site of 
the city was completed, nature scattered her surplus treasures and 
built beautiful islands in the deep sea close by. She would leave 
nothing undone to make this city imperial in beauty, so she 
spread over it all a sky gloriously bright, yet tender and soft. 

The Bosphorus is about 15 miles long, winding, twisting, and 
bending, and swelling into rounded bays, between the Black Sea 
and the Marmora. It varies from a half mile to perhaps a mile 
and a half in width, and has a depth in some parts of 60 fathoms, 
and everywhere deep enough for the largest ships. It has no 
tide, but sweeps with majestic force from the Black Sea, in some 
points with a current of nine miles an hour. Throughout its 
length noble hills and mountains lift from the water's edge, and 
spurs, divided by narrow valleys or gorges, running down in bold 
ridges, with here and there coves or deep creeks shooting back 
into the hills. The largest of these creeks is the Golden Horn, 
near the Marmora, over a quarter of a mile wide at its mouth and 
running back with diminishing width some three miles into 
a small stream of fresh water, " the sweet waters of Europe." 
The point lying between the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus, and 
the sea contains the " Old Seraglio," now a waste of unused 
palaces and unkempt gardens. This is called Seraglio Point, and 
rises rather rapidly from the water to 200 or more feet, and, 
though neglected, is most picturesque when seen from the sea and 
from the Bosphorus. The gardens and old palaces cover 100 to 
200 acres, and are surrounded by a high wall, which, on the water 
side, is massive and dingy with age. Within these walls have 
been committed more silent deeds of intrigue and crime than on 
any other spot of its size on earth. Many a disgraced favorite 
and many a suspected wife and concubine has been silently 
slipped into the river, whose vast depths never told the tale. 
Many a rightful heir, and not a few emperors and sultans them- 
selves, have here met their doom, and no living mortal dared ask 
whither they had gone. Here crime has held high court under 
Roman and Christian emperors, and under Moslem sultans, and 
knew no relenting until fire drove the rulers to other quarters. 

On the highest elevation of the point, and immediately behind 
the garden and palace walls, stands the Mosque of St. Sophia,_ 



ST. SOPHIA. 343 

with its mighty flattened dome, lifting out of and over other and 
smaller domes, whose arches support the grander one, and 
lightened by four beautiful and lofty minarets. This is the noblest 
edifice ever erected for the worship of the one living God, and is 
the oldest of His churches, which has always and continuously 
been used for worship. For over i,ooo years it was the most 
holy of Christian temples, and when the Cross was removed 
the Crescent immediately took its place, and the building became 
the most exalted of Islam mosques. The minarets do not deface, 
but rather add to the architectural perfections of the original 
design. They are to me the perfect complement of the swelling 
dome for a place of worship. I cannot calmly look upon a noble 
mosque without a feeling of religious sentiment filling my heart. 
Were there no associations connected with the grandest of gothic 
cathedrals, I would look upon them only with cold admiration. 
The " Taj " for awhile almost sanctified the bad woman who 
sleeps beneath its rounded vault. I have to recall the effects of 
Islamism to prevent the cold marble in dome and minaret in a 
fine mosque arousing a feeling of reverence for the Koran. It is 
the " cause " of Christ which makes me venerate even the grandest 
gothic church. It is, however, not until after entering St. Sophia 
and walking around its vast interior, and then standing beneath 
the overhanging vault that the wonderful perfections of the edifice 
sink into the soul. At first one is disappointed ; the proportions 
are so fine that it looks small ; but it grows and grows until the 
effect is almost painfully impressive. Perhaps the associations 
have much to do with this. The centuries which rolled along 
while the worship of the true God was held there — the memory 
of the thousands of old men, women, and children who were 
packed within its walls for sanctuary, when the blood-stained 
Turks rushed in and gorged themselves with slaughter. The 
recollection of the cry of " Illaha il Allah, Mohammed resoul 
Allah ! " uttered by Mohammed II., when he tore down the Cross 
with his blood-dyed hands and planted the Cresent in its place. 
These memories rushed upon me as I stood under the mighty 
dome, and filled me with a sentiment of admiration and awe no 
other church ever caused. 

A mullah was sitting upon his cushions preaching to some 
30 or 40 men squatted about him. I could now and then 
catch some long ago familiar Arabic word, but could not under- 
stand a thing he was saying ; but never in my life have I listened 
to such perfect declamation — now in plain colloquial tone, telling 
them of something connected with their religion or their duty, 
then in winning persuasion drawing them to him ; then, with 
almost fierce invective telling them of some wrong or sin, with 
gestures all the while suited precisely to the tone, and, I felt, to 
the words. I did not understand a single word spoken, yet I felt 
sure I knew what he was saying. I stood and listened spell- 



344 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN. 

bound for a quarter of an hour, and could have stayed longer 
with pleasure. Ah ! there is an oratory which is born of nature. 
It is not in phrase nor in flowing words ; it comes from the heart. 
Heart and brain speak to heart and brain. The rapt attention 
and the occasional ejaculations of this mullah's hearers proved to 
me this man spoke from the heart and reached the heart ; that he 
was one of nature's orators. 

Close by St. Sophia is another noble mosque, Achmet, large 
and with six minarets. Then, farther back, are many others, all 
more or less patterned after St. Sophia, scattered throughout 
Stamboul, as the city swells and widens, and the Golden Horn 
and the sea diverge more and more, until some three miles 
back, runs the grand old Roman wall of great height and vast 
thickness, and relieved every few hundred yards by massive tow- 
ers. This wall commences in the ruins of a large fortress on the 
sea, with seven towers, and stretches some three miles to the 
Golden Horn. The wall and towers are broken and wrecked, 
covered with ivy and hanging plants, with large shrubs lifting 
from the top and broken sides, presenting a most picturesque 
appearance. Within this wall and between the waters is a popu- 
lation of some 700,000 ; Turks, Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, 
each nationality living in its separate quarter. 

Across the Golden Horn come Pera,,Gallatta, and other towns, 
now grown into one. The highest part of this is perhaps 400 or 
500 feet. Through these towns, or parts of towns, run deep 
narrow valleys, the bottoms beautiful in gardens of trees, vines, 
and vegetables. The steep sides of the hills which enclose 
these gorges, and along their ridges, are covered by houses of 
several stories on the lower fronts, but running into the hillside 
on the other. In some localities the buildings are all white in 
stucco, and many of them palatial in size and architecture ; in 
others, weather-stained wooden buildings, leaning against the 
hills, with their fronts of three to five stories, bold and yet pretty, 
covered by latticed balconies or projecting windows, resting upon 
long brackets and jutting far over the narrow streets. These 
never knew glaring paint, but are tinted by time and the weather 
in artistic tone. The streets are narrow and very crooked, having 
never been laid out, but the first houses being erected to suit the 
convenience of the owners, the streets adapted themselves to those 
built, and others sprang up along the bending ways. Although 
from the streets and the crooked alleys and lanes leading into 
them the ground seems covered with structures, yet when viewed 
from an elevation or from a distance it is seen that in little courts 
among the houses there are so many trees — fruit or flowering — so 
many that the city seems half embowered in shade. Besides, 
about many of the imposing structures, hidden behind lofty 
walls, are charming gardens, some of considerable extent. These 
add greatly to the bower-like tone of the town. 



A WONDROUS PICTURE. 345 

Across the Bosphorus, opposite Stamboul and Pera, lies the 
old city of Scutari, for centuries held by the Turks before they 
won the European shore. This town, with one above and 
another below, has a population of 300,000 to 400,000, grows out 
of the water and climbs the steep high hills, and is dominated 
by a mountain over 2,000 feet high. From this, one gets 
the finest view of human life combined with nature's beauties in 
the world. Almost under it lies the old tumble-down Turkish 
town, with cemeteries of large size, in several localities quite in 
the town, densely shaded by tall spire-like cypress trees in som- 
bre funereal green. Then farther, yet apparently almost under 
one, the grand Bosphorus, bending and doubling between lofty 
mountains, on whose steep sides are many villages or suburbs 
springing out of the river's edge and climbing high up on the 
steep slopes or far into the gorges which bore into the hills ; sev- 
eral magnificent palaces of sultan and pashas, with long, beautiful 
fagades laved in the emerald floods, line the two shores, but more 
especially the European opposite. There lies Stamboul and 
Pera, with their mosques, with domes in masses and minarets 
pointing towards the sky, and with bright palaces and white 
houses and softly-tinted old wooden buildings, all embowered in 
green, and softened and toned to a delicious coloring, the whole 
having the appearance of having been laid out and built less for 
use than for picturesque effect ; over and beyond Pera are the 
hills or mountains Avith their nearer sides covered with cypress 
groves, in which with the glass are seen the turbaned headstones 
of the Turks, or dotted with Arab graveyards resembling in the 
distance rock- and boulder-covered slopes all glaring in the sun- 
light ; and still beyond, stretch the soft outline of the hills car- 
peted in velvety green. The cities and towns below are so 
large that they are the homes of 1,500,000 souls. 

Running back and through these are gorges or narrow valleys, 
with their bottoms green in trees and gardens, and at this sea- 
son of the year brilliant in blooming acacia and other flowering 
trees and shrubs. Looking to the right are the broken hills and 
deep waters climbing towards the Black Sea ; looking to the left, 
is the smooth Marmora, with hilly islands close by, studded with 
villas and villages, and over and beyond, lofty Olympus, wrapped 
in a shecst of purest snow, and all overhead spans a soft, pearly 
blue sky with fleecy clouds lightly swimming upon the vaulted, 
ethereal blue. As we sate and took in this wondrous picture, or, 
rather, succession of pictures, a little skylark rising close by com- 
menced its love song ; up it climbed in spirals, now to the right, 
then turned to the left ; higher and higher, singing all the while, 
until it was a mere speck against the sky. There it fluttered 
and poured out its heart in pleading, loving agony, and, overcome 
by its own passion, fell, singing as it fell, as if afraid that the 
spell of its carol would be lost to its mate, until within 10 to 



346 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

20 feet of the ground it sang as if its heart was bursting 
with song. I bent my eyes and walked slowly down the hill to 
our horses, unwilling to take another look. I wanted to carry 
away the picture crystallized in one perfect instant, and shall try 
to retain it until one boundless vision of perfected beauty shall 
fill my soul and one endless carol shall fill my heart throughout 
an eternal morning. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE BOSPHORUS — ACROSS BULGARIA — BUCHAREST — ROUMANIA, 
ITS PEOPLE— APPEARANCE AND PRODUCTIONS. 

Buda-Festh, May 19, 1888. 

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the 12th, we weighed 
anchor and steamed out of the Golden Horn, and up the Bos- 
phorus for the Black Sea, on our way to Varna. Travellers often 
write that one of the drawbacks to the pleasure of travelling is 
the necessity of parting so frequently with friends made en 
voyage. To me this is not the case ; I am so occupied with the 
things I see that I do not make many such friends, but I do make 
friendship with the places we visit, and there are few I do not 
quit with regret. This has been more the case in this our " race 
with the sun," than on any previous journeying. There is so much 
in such a voyage around the world that seems typical of the 
voyage of life that there comes over me an irresistible feeling 
that I, too, will finish my course with the end of the trip. I 
believe I never have now what are called the " blues," and rarely 
get low-spirited, but as we pass around this globe of ours, the 
spot on which we stand is to us the highest of the rounded world, 
and to it we have been climbing ; and each day a part of the 
world is left behind, and still fewer heights are to be gained. 
When we stood upon east longitude 92^^° we were almost oppo- 
site the starting-point of our course, and day by day afterwards 
the mile posts behind became more than the posts before us, and 
day by day the miles to be cleared became fewer and fewer, and 
the distance looked back upon grew in magnitude. So with the 
voyage of life. With our eyes looking aloft, the climb to the 
meridional zenith of our days is slow, and with the quick pulsa- 
tions of active energy, our hearts swell and teem with hope. But 
ah ! Rapidly pass the days when the down grade is reached. 
Then comes the solace of true philosophy — that philosophy 
which teaches the necessity of quickened action and steady 
exertion, and a calm resignation to the inevitable. Then more 
than even before, is valuable that best of all rules for life, " Do 
all that is possible to-day and hope for the morrow." 

While I did not wish to stay longer in Constantinople, yet 
when I looked back upon the glorious picture it made, and passed 

347 



348 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

up the Bosphorus and drank in its unequaled beauties, I could 
not repress a deep sigh that I at least could never again behold 
them. The sun was dropping over the hills, now entirely hid- 
den, then bursting out in all of his glory as some gorge would 
open or valley would carry the sky line farther toward the west ; 
now we were sailing over the deep green water rolling along 
in majestic sweeps ; then we would round some projecting prom- 
onotory where the currents rush in rapid fury. Now a palace 
would dip its feet into the cool depths, and beautiful gardens 
and green woods would mantle the hills above it ; and then a 
village would steal down some deep gorge in modest beauty, 
and come to the river as if half ashamed of its assurance; here 
an old castle perched itself upon a high rock, and sent massive 
walls zigzagging about steep precipices, as if the only idea of 
the builder was to attain the very extreme of the picturesque ; 
and there a mountain would run gently back with easy slope, and 
some rich man's house would crown its distant height, and fields 
would wave in swaying crops. Passing the earthworks of the 
Turk, we entered the Black Sea just as the sun sank behind the 
reddened horizon of the west ; lowering clouds hung upon the 
north, where the Russian bear was about to prowl around his 
Arctic home, and to hug to his heart his one fond, never-dying 
hope of building his lair among the hills of Stamboul. 

The Black Sea was dark and calm when the night gathered 
about us, and early in the morning we entered the little rounded, 
but not well-protected harbor of Varna, the only sea-coast town 
of Bulgaria. This, from the water, is a pretty-looking place of 
25,000 population, but, I was told, is dirty and unattractive within. 
Surrounding it and the little bay in front, are high hills of 600 
or 800 feet in height, standing some distance from the water. 
Along the crests of the ridges are seen numbers of earthworks. 
One was pointed out as having been thrown up by the first 
Napoleon. It was drizzling and rainy when we were rowed 
ashore. Here, as nearly everywhere in the East, there are no 
piers for ships to tie to, but all lie pretty well out. The bad 
weather prevented us stopping to witness the review promised to 
be held by Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, on the day of our 
arrival. I wished to see how the people looked upon their exotic 
ruler. I am rather down on the whole system of such transplant- 
ing, and I have an idea the several peoples feel the same way. 
You know the old song : 

" Some wicked men in olden times 

Threw Daniel in the den of the lions. 

The lions for Daniel did n't care a 

And Daniel did n't care a for the lions." 

George and the people of Greece evidently look upon each 
other as Daniel and the lions did, and I am told the same feeling 



SOLDIERS, SOLDIERS EVERYWHERE. 349 

exists in all these principalities, whose princes were drawn from 
the royal stables of Denmark and Germany. 

The streets of Varna, where we could see them, were, however, 
bannered and decorated in honor of the prince's coming; 
flowers and garlands hung about all the stations along our road 
to Rostchuk, and the people looked as if they were pleased with 
the show about to be given them. What a trick it is of. kings 
and " sich " to tickle the people with shows and pastimes, and 
what "fools we mortals be " to be so tickled; but we are. I 
sometimes think that all of the sympathy we feel for the oppressed 
is hardly deserved by them, so willingly, or at least so tamely, 
do the majority yield the neck to the yoke. Pageants and shows, 
too, are so cheap. A few thousand spent in amusing the masses 
go farther than a great many thousands paid to murder them.' 
But over here even the bullet is gilded, and the spear has a 
pretty banner attached to it. I was in Fisher's huge magazine 
the other day at Buda-Pesth, admiring his exquisite majolicas. 
His salesman stopped me while bargaining, that we might go to 
the door to listen to a grand band, and to see several regiments 
marching by. " Es ist schon, nicht wahr, meinherr?" "Yah 
wohl," I replied. "Those fellows could kill a great many Rus- 
sians in a day, and a big crowd of unruly Hungarians in a min- 
ute." He understood me, and for a while seemed to be thinking. 
He then asked me if we had many soldiers. I told him about 
30,000, " but then we have a population of only 60,000,000." I 
cannot help it, though it is none of my business, but I cannot 
enjoy looking at a grand parade of men paid to kill, especially 
in Europe, where kings pretend to be followers of Him whose 
mission on earth was one of "love and peace." From Varna to 
this place a soldier is rarely out of sight, and from our car 
windows we saw regiments and battalions drilling on the out- 
skirts of every moderately-sized town. Officers covered with 
lace are brighter in coloring than the butterfly-ladies at all high- 
toned cafes and gardens, and the clank of their sword-scabbards 
on the stone flagging and asphalt walks, is always heard on 
every corso and fashionable promenade. They loll back covered 
with orders and cordons in the finest equipages on every after- 
noon drive, and their prancing steeds are constantly careering 
along the bridle paths of every park. Splendid-looking fellows 
they often are, and fill the eye and win the admiration of the 
fairest of women, but there is something in their trade utterly ab- 
horrent to my Republican heart. More soldiers, twice over, are at 
all times quartered at Buda-Pesth than our whole country possesses. 

There is a Providence watching over men and nations, our good 
people .say. If this be true, I again exclaim: "How long, oh 
Lord ! How long! " 

The railroad leads through the hills at Varna up a very pretty 
valley. We started at 7:30, and were soon in interesting scenery 



3SC A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

— nothing grand, but a succession of broad valleys well covered 
with fields, and overlooked by tall, rugged hills, 600 to 800 feet 
high, clothed now in small bushes, and then lifting in rocky preci- 
pices, often rendered very striking by their embattled-looking" 
walls, being deeply pierced by caves in great numbers, looking as 
if cut by hand. Herds of gray cattle and large numbers of horses 
were constantly seen, and several pretty villages, now all decked 
in bunting and garlands. We climed to an upper plateau of 
deeply rolling country; perhaps I am wrong in terming it a 
plateau, so high, so rolling, and so deep are the depressioas. 
This up country is of very rich land, and highly productive. The 
wheat, rye, and oats on it were all well set and finely green, and 
the vineyards healthy looking. Trees are not wanting, and the 
stretches of rolling country often seen for 10 to 15 miles were 
exceedingly pretty. It looked farm-like, although no farm-houses 
were ever seen, and sometimes for miles not a village or hamlet 
was visible. The villages lie along the high road, which, at times, 
was quite far from the railroad. The farms must often be two, 
three, or more miles back from the houses of those who cultivate 
them. 

We were running for three or four hours through this rich land, 
and seven hours and a half from Varna to Rustchuk, where we 
struck the Danube, here a broad and mighty stream of white, 
muddy water. This is Europe's grandest river, for the Volga is 
so far in eastern Russia that it can hardly be called European. 
We crossed on a small steamer to Giurgievo, in Roumania, and 
were soon on the great Oriental express on its way directly for 
Paris. We ran rapidly through a fine farming country, low, roll- 
ing, green in wheat, oats, and rye, and with large acreage, now 
being broken or just planted in Indian corn. The land was not so 
rich nor so pretty as the part of Bulgaria we had traversed. Here 
commences that vast wheat country, which stretches westward 
and northward, and northeast, running into Hungary and far into 
Russia, the so-called granary of Europe. 

In two hours we were in Bucharest, the capital of the kingdom 
of Roumania. It is an irregularly laid-out city of over 300,000 
inhabitants, has some fine hotels, 120 churches, nearly all Greek, 
and some good drives. The streets are all paved, partly in granite 
block and partly in large cobble or small flat stones. The mistake 
is being made of laying the blocks on a natural bed. The church 
attached to the hospital and charities of Princess Balassa is pretty 
without and elaborately rich within ; has a fine monument of the 
princess, and is all gilded inside. The screen which separates the 
altar end of the building from the main church and the whole rear 
down, is one mass of gold, and shows that the people have much 
of the Oriental in their taste. The Metropolitan Church, adjoin- 
ing the Bishop's palace, and the House of Parliament lying on a 
hill along the edge of the city, are interesting. In the church, in- 



BUCHAREST. 351 

cased in a silver covering fitting the form, are the remains of St. 
Demetrius, who lived some 1,200 years ago. The remains were 
miraculously preserved, and have the extraordinary quality of 
effecting the cure of sick people, whose garments are laid in the 
case containing the body and there left for a couple of weeks. 
There were several bundles when the case was opened to our 
view. I believe during the two weeks the garments are thus left 
the sick one gets well, or — dies. The time is certainly ample for 
a thorough change. The good priest who showed the relic had 
entire confidence in the hygienic qualities of his corpse! 

On the threshold and lower door-frame of the main entrance to 
the House of Estates (Parliament) was scattered the blood of some 
men killed here two weeks before. The papers claimed only two 
or three were killed in all, but a quite intelligent man, who acted 
as our guide, assured me it was generally believed the killed ran 
into 200 or more. This was what may be termed a party fight, 
and was a sort of revolution. The party of the outs demanded 
the right to be heard by the ministry. This was refused. It tried 
to force itself into the Hall of the Estates, shots were fired, men 
■were killed. But the ministry was forced to resign, and the outs 
got in. I do not know what the distinction is between the two 
parties ; perhaps, as in other countries we know of, the ins were 
in, and wanted to stay in ; the outs were cold, and wanted to 
get in out of the cold. They charged that the ins were stealing. 
The outs never steal ; they can't ; but wait till they get their 
hands in, and then see. 

We spent two days in Bucharest, and were pleased to see that 
it is rapidly developing into the capital of a fine people, and 
already begins to wear the dress of a thoroughly western European 
city. That Roumania is a constitutional government is constantly 
evidenced by the animated discussions had on political matters in 
the railway carriages. In Europe I never take a first-class car- 
riage, if I can help it. In the second-class I meet the people, 
land-owners, merchants, and well-to-do mechanics. They are 
always willing to talk to an American, whereas, in a first-class 
compartment, one never meets them. But for the language, I 
could almost have thought myself in America when running 12 
hours from Bucharest to Turnu Severin, at the western boundary 
of the kingdom, for political talk was constant. In this run, to- 
gether with the one two days before, we passed through the cen- 
tre of nearly half of Roumania, a country with an area of over 
48,000 square miles. A great part of it is very fertile, and on its 
hills there is an abundance of timber. Its map shows it to be dog- 
legged in shape, about half of it lying between the Carpathian 
Mountains and Russia, the other half being between the Danube 
and the same mountains, which have bended due west. The 
northern limb of the leg, I was told, resembles Bulgaria — hilly, or 
very high rolling, and a part quite mountainous. Fully a third of 



352 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

tlie whole, being the part lying towards the Danube, is either 
an almost dead flat, or a low, rolling country, running into hills as 
the Carpathians are approached. These mountains appeared, in 
the distance, before we had left the capital an hour, in a long 
range with a sheet of snow spread over the crest. This is of the 
winter's fall, and disappears before July. 

For hours we were upon a vast plain, perfectly flat, except 
where some creek or river ran through it in a depression. The 
soil was good. Trees were growing about the plains, in lines here 
and there, in good-sized copses frequently, nearly all trimmed high 
up, the twigs being used. for fuel. The railroad stations were 
good and fairly ornamental, and railroad construction-workers, in 
their garments of white cotton — a sort of wide shirt gathered in 
at the waist and confined by a broad girdle protecting the vital 
parts of the body — looked cheerful and contented. Women are 
largely field hands, and were frequently the drivers of the six-ox 
plows. The land is well broken by good plows with a couple of 
wheels in front. The oxen are not strong looking, nor are the 
horses. A first-class team of two with us could do the work here 
done by three. A proprietor who kindly gave me much informa- 
tion in German, interlarded with, French, said the beasts were 
weak because not well cared for, and with a sigh said he 
wished they had some American energy with them. He laid the 
blame upon the peasants. There is a constant agrarian fight 
going on between the two classes. When the present constitu- 
tional government began its course, the land was divided to a 
considerable extent among the people. At first it worked well, 
but when a house or farm had to be divided among a man's kin, 
the holdings became too small for their support ; they then to a 
great extent surrendered themselves to the proprietary landlords 
and became his laborers, and when, too, they held to their farms, 
they became laborers for certain fixed periods. In this way the 
landlord or proprietor gets the first work and reaps the cream of 
the season. This led to the late outbreak of two or three weeks 
before — I do not refer to the one in the capital, which was purely 
political. Several men intimated to me that Russian intrigue was 
at the bottom of the thing, and one or two boldly asserted it. 
The paws of the northern bear are a constant source of dread, if 
not a menace, to all southeast Europe, as well as to central and 
eastern Asia. Americans generally seem to have sympathy with 
Russia. I can only account for it by the inherited dislike many 
have for the land of the Georges, and by the hatred of the Irish 
for every thing English. What a blessing it would be to the 
United States if Ireland could be thoroughly pacified. It now 
causes an outside strain to be constantly brought to bear directly 
upon our English relations and directly upon our intercourse with 
other lands. We cannot help giving our sympathies to the 
oppressed sons and daughters of Erin, and to join with their kin- 
dred in America in an expression of that sympathy. 



ROUMANIA AND ITS PRODUCTS. 353 

Russia is a mighty colossus stalking across the world. Wher- 
ever she goes despotism and its attendant instrument, espionage, 
follows. There ought not to be a single feeling of affinity 
between the denizen of a free soil and this land of unlimited 
monarchy. On the other hand, though England be grasping and 
oppressive, yet where she goes a love of freedom goes, a real 
comprehension of civil liberty goes. However much we may 
dislike many of her manners, her bullying and domineering spirit ; 
however much we may be disgusted by the supercilious demeanor 
of so many of her people, yet we are forced to acknowledge that 
Great Britain is to-day the very bulwark of the world's freedom. 
In a charming interview I had the other day with Prof. Vambery, 
the celebrated Hungarian thinker and author, I gave expression 
to this idea, when he bounced from his chair, and running to his 
desk took a manuscript in which he was then writing, showed me 
a page, and said : " Read that, sir ; your very language, almost in 
exact words, sir. It makes me happy to find that our ideas are 
thus echoes one of the other." Vambery is a patriot, a lover of 
freedom and a hater of every form and fashion of tyranny ; he 
thinks that England must overbalance Russia or the dial on the 
face of the clock of progress will be set back indefinitely. Why 
is it ? Simply England is forced to a line of freedom by the very 
life-blood of her institutions. She is built upon a rock in which 
liberty, civil rights, and independence are the composing ingredi- 
ents. She oppresses Ireland because of the cupidity of her land- 
holders, and in trying to do that which is repugnant to the very 
genius of her institutions, the fight is inevitable and must go on 
until freedom holds up its head on Irish as well as on English 
soil. 

Roumania's plains produce a vast deal of small grain — wheat, 
rye, oats, and good barley. All of these cover the ground well. 
Much land is now being, or has just been broken, for Indian corn, 
some of which was just up. I visited the market-place in Bucha- 
rest and found few cereals, fruits or vegetables which seemed up 
to our notion ; apples were poor in size, but well flavored ; vege- 
tables small, and the Indian corn, with little, rounded grains. It 
is planted very close, and grows with short stalks and small ears. 
The peasants lack good seed, I should think. It amazes me to 
see how greatly corn production has increased in the old world 
since I was first abroad, from '51 to '53. Then maize was an 
occasional crop, now it is almost universal. Tobacco, I think, is 
in more universal use than any one other plant. Next comes 
wheat, but corn is fast treading upon the latter. Wherever we 
go and in every land I can hear from where it will grow it is 
becoming one of the heavy crops. There is a large cattle herd- 
ing and horse growing business in Roumania. The horses, how- 
ever, are rather under sized, and the cattle not heavy, and beef 
very thin. Great flocks of sheep and of goats — the former 



354 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN. 

generally brown — are seen. Cheese is made from the milk of 
both animals ; that from the sheep is sweet and rich, and can 
be spread upon bread like firm butter. Bulgarians are often 
seen as shepherds. They are rather a nomadic race, and 
are the sheep tenders of all European countries once under 
Turkish rule. Their letters and signs resemble the Russian 
a little, and, I am told, their language too. In Roumania the 
language is a mixture, a sort of Latin mixed with Italian, with 
an infusion of the Oriental. I could always understand the sub- 
ject under discussion when hearing them talk, owing to the 
familiar words, though I could catch nothing else. The language 
is softer than French, but lacks the soft, flat sound of Italian, 
caused by such large usage of vowels. The people are fairly 
good looking, but we saw few pretty, and no beautiful, women. 
The peasants wear shoes of sole or other heavy leather, bent up 
around the foot and fastened by thongs over the instep, and 
strapped about the ankle, with over the shoulders a sort of sack 
made of woollen stufT almost as heavy as carpeting. This shoe 
is common to Roumania, Bulgaria, and Servia, and a part of 
Hungary. 

I was told that good water is everywhere to be had, either in 
natural springs or moderately deep wells. The well-bucket is 
hoisted on a horizontal spindle, with a cart-wheel in place of a 
crank — apparently a worn and discarded wheel. 

There were many pretty stretches of country, and, toward the 
west, good scenery and very large vineyards, and orchards of 
prunes and walnuts. We tried several varieties of wine. They all 
seemed pure, very cheap, and good. A connoisseur would prob- 
ably not like them. I make it a rule to drink the wine of the 
country, and like nearly all when pure. I can never be a prohi- 
bitionist so long as wine be inhibited. We drank a dehghtful red 
wine at Turnu Severin, and a good white one, both of the neigh- 
borhood. Before reaching that place, a few miles eastward, we 
began a very rapid descent to the Danube through a scene not 
often surpassed, over wooded hills and across deep valleys ; the 
great river lay like a mighty silvery band winding along the valley 
below, and coming out of the Carpathian range, where it cuts 
through the mountains in passes wild and grand. The grade is 
very severe — perhaps one in 25 — and continues until the river 
level is reached. The gorges down which we ran are heavily 
wooded; the sun was setting in a field of red; the river was in 
great ribbons of silver; and nightingales were gushingly carolling, 
unable to restrain their love-making, until it grew dark. We got 
our luggage on board the steamer on which we were to go as far 
as Belgrade, went ashore for a supper and for a bottle of the best 
native wine to be found. Then, being full of good things and 
happy, we sat on the deck, watched the stars, listened to the 
music of the night-loving bird, and thought of loved ones at home. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SCENERY ON LOWER DANUBE— BUDA-PESTH— BEAUTIFUL WOMEN 
—MARGUERITE ISLAND— HUNGARIAN DERBY. 

Vienna, May 24, 1888. 

The lower Danube, from Vienna down, is not, taken as a 
whole, an interesting river to travel upon. It runs frequently 
through great plains or low hills. There are a few points, how- 
ever, where it is fine, and between Turnu Severin up to Bazias it 
is surpassed by few rivers anywhere. Between these points it 
breaks through the Carpathian Mountains and the foot-hills flank- 
ing them. At the highest point the mountains rise above the 
water 800 or 1,000 feet, are very steep, and in many places lift 
by sheer precipices several hundred feet. This is a part of the 
renowned " Iron Gate " and Kazan Pass. Nearly the whole dis- 
tance run during some six to seven hours was through these. In 
some places the river is contracted to a width of 300 to 500 feet, 
and then widens into gulfs of nearly a mile in width, with eddies 
whirling in them. In the Kazan Pass the fall in the stream is 16 
feet in a mile, and during low river, steamers drawing very 
little water find the passage dangerous, and passengers are landed 
and carried over the high-road which has been cut along the 
precipice. This is the great Hungarian road running from Pres- 
burg to Orsova, the frontier town, where it is met by a fine 
national road traversing Roumania to the Black Sea. In the rock 
on the south side of the river through these gorges or river passes 
are yet seen the remains of the Roman road built by the Emperor 
Trajan. It lies near the water's edge, and was carried around 
some of the sharp bends on scaffolding hanging over the rushing 
river. Deep holes, about a foot square, show how joists were let 
in for the hanging road to rest upon. In a tablet cut into the 
face of one of the precipices is an inscription yet partially legible, 
in honor of "Trajanus Pontifex Maximus," and to commemorate 
his building the road. It was only a few feet wide, and intended 
for men and horses, and possibly as a sort of tow-path. It has 
been many years since I passed along the Danube from Regens- 
burg to Vienna, and 14 since I again ascended it as far as Lintz, 
and I may have forgotten some of its grandest scenery. But I 
think there is none on it to compare in grandeur to this part of 
the lower Danube. 

355 



35 6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

We were considerably annoyed by a small fly — a brown-headed 
large gnat, said to be very injurious to cattle and horses, for 50 
or more miles around, and which, the people believe, are all 
hatched in a deep cavern partially filled with water, hollowed far 
up into one of the precipices at the upper end of the pass. They 
are peculiar to this locality, and take their name from the old 
castle of " Golubaez," which is perched on a crag below the 
cavern. This castle, and one on the opposite cliff, were destroyed 
in the Turkish wars. The souls of some of the old blood-letting 
warriors may have gotten into these little brutes, and they are 
avenging themselves upon men and their four-footed servants. 
That, at least, would be the Buddhistic tradition if such were in 
vogue here. Two or three hours before reaching Belgrade the 
rapids of the river entirely ceased, and the country becomes more 
or less a plain, much of which is now under water, owing to the 
great flood which, a few weeks ago, exceeded any before known 
in the memory of man. Many thousand acres of farm lands are 
flooded. We were often upon what appeared to be a wide 
placid lake, 8 to 12 miles across. These wide stretches of 
water contain many pieces of wood, now islands, which were very 
pretty, and were filled with singing birds whose carols we con- 
stantly heard. 

We had during the day Hungary on our right and Servia on 
the left, the Hungarian side generally a plain, stretching far back 
from the river ; on the Servian side a few small plains, but 
generally broken, and in the distance mountainous. The same 
character of crops we had seen in Roumania ruled — wheat, oats, 
rye, and corn just up or being planted, and potatoes. There is 
evidently quite a fruit crop, plums or prunes being most abundant, 
and walnut trees were scattered everywhere. We could see, when 
the water had not driven them entirely back, many cattle and 
sheep. 

' Belgrade disappointed us. Having so often heard of it as the 
outer fortress of the Turks, and that battles had been frequently 
fought for its possession, I expected to find a commanding strong- 
hold. It was quite tame. Its population is about 25,000, and the 
Turkish people having entirely disappeared, their mosques and 
Oriental buildings are going into ruin. Here we took the train 
for Buda-Pesth. Cars good, and the road in fair condition ; time, 
seven hours, over an almost flat plain of more than average land ; 
not what our prairie people would call rich, but yet capable of 
producing large quantities of cereals. The country presents 
much the appearance of some of our flat prairie lands, only trees 
are more abundant. There are evidently many large individual 
proprietors. These are all ranked as nobles and have estates of 
1,000 to 4,000 acres, and some of them several such. Their farm- 
houses are extensive, long, one story brick or stone buildings, 
some of them several hundred feet long and enclosing an inner 



OUTLOOK AND PRODUCTS OF HUNGARY. 357 

quadrangle. About these are huge ricks of straw. Near some of 
the estates are villages of peasant houses in rows, with spaces of 
a hundred to two hundred feet between them. The peasant 
farmers have small holdings. Horses as well as oxen are used on 
the farm, and a pair of either is of size and strength sufficient to 
break the ground. Indeed, the horses are large, not of the French 
or Flanders kind, but tall, well-formed, and well-muscled roadsters. 
The cattle are of a uniform color, a sort of dark, tawny gray, with 
long, upturned horns. We saw very large herds of both horned 
cattle and horses, and flocks containing many hundred sheep. 
Much land in Hungary is in grape culture. The vines have been 
greatly damaged by the almost unprecedented severity of the 
past winter, and its very deep and long-lasting snow. The Hun- 
garian wines are good, rather heavy, much more so than those of 
either the Rhine or Bordeaux. One notices this, not while drink- 
ing them, but a half hour afterward. It is very cheap, yet a large 
amount of beer is drunk. It is wonderful how the taste for this 
is growing throughout the world. In every land we have visited 
beer is the favorite drink of all people of European antecedents. 
Breweries are being built in Japan and in India, and the importa- 
tion from Europe and Australia is very large. Gambrinus, not 
Bacchus, bids fair to rule the thirsty world. Prohibitionists 
should understand this. If they will only bend their energies 
towards keeping impurities and bad alcohol out of beer, and 
cultivate a taste for light wines, their efforts will be of lasting 
benefit to mankind. While they continue to class beer and wine 
with whiskey and alcoholic poisons, they make an opposition 
which is apt, from a spirit of supposed independence, to run to 
the very extreme of favoring every thing they oppose. The 
beer and wine man steps into the ranks of the whiskey men 
sim.ply because the temperance man is determined to force him 
into line. 

The Christian, as such, fights every form of wrong-doing, for 
his lessons are that sin is sin and cannot be weighed ; none so 
small that it can pass unobserved ; none so great that it cannot 
be forgiven. Not so, however, with the philosopher, the states- 
man, or the human reformer ; their duty is to overlook or to be 
blind to the small frailties of humanity, frailties inherent in man's 
nature, or to use these very frailties as a means of steering men 
away from crimes and of winning them to higher virtues. Tem- 
perance in the sense of total abstinence, cannot, consistently with 
the life of Christ, be preached as an abstract and obligatory 
Christian duty. It certainly cannot be enunciated by the philos- 
opher or statesman as an abstract ethical or civil duty. To them 
it is not the use, but the abuse, of alcohol that makes the crime. 
To the majority of the world — the overwhelming majority — it is 
only in the abuse that sin begins. The teacher loses the force of 
his argument against real abstract sin when he preaches that to 



358 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

be a sin which his hearer absolutely denies being such. Ergo, 
they make a mistake, a mistake which many good and wise men 
believe to be a crime against true religion, when they spend their 
time and energies in trying to exclude beer and wine from the 
stomachs of the world. But as long as the profession of prohibi- 
tion is a trade no advice can help the thing. 

From Buda-Pesth to Presburg the country is not so flat as be- 
yond ; it is often rolling, and is quite pretty now when it wears 
its bright spring garments, and it shows a fair state of culti- 
vation. The proprietary estates are numerous. The straw ricks, 
large and abundant, and the quadrangular farm houses extensive. 
Taken as a whole, the trip from Varna to Vienna is an interesting 
one and one which Americans should make far more than they 
do for the scenery ; and when they do travel over the line they 
should not do as the majority of tourists do — rush througla 
night and day on the great Oriental express. Too many Ameri- 
cans think a tour in Europe is satisfactorily made by visiting its 
cities and great mountains, and run from place to place in through 
trains, too often doing so by night. The country through which 
we passed, as seen by day from the more moderately moving cars 
we occupied, is a printed page from which much can be learned 
if carefully studied. 

The whole land from the Black Sea to this place has been not 
only full of matters suggesting thought, but most charming to 
the eye. Instead of being wearied by a twenty- to twenty-five 
mile-an-hour pace, I could wish the speed diminished by at least 
ten miles. In Buda-Pesth I met Prof. Vambery, the Hungarian 
thinker and writer. After an hour spent with him he took me to 
the National Club, a magnificent establishment, to which all the 
first men belong — even though residents of distant parts of the 
kingdom — and of which he is honorary librarian. He spends two 
hours each day in it reading. He is a man of great vitality and 
of'most charming, naive enthusiasm and simplicity. He invited 
me to tea, informally, saying that others visited him because he 
was a sort of lion, but that I talked with him as a man and 
freshened up his ideas. He understands twelve languages and 
can write, I think, in ten, and is the highest authority on 
Orientalism. One of the Professor's chiefest charms is that he 
does not know too much. Poor human nature rebels in the 
presence of a man who knows it all. Vambery is modest with 
all of his knowledge. We had a common personal bond. We 
were friends of Bayard Taylor. He thinks that Asia will be re- 
generated by a light coming from the west, and that this light 
will be bright while the sun of England shines throughout the 
Orient. I suggested that as the sun moved on westward, per- 
haps, it was through the long closed doors of Japan that the 
vivifying rays were to get into Asia. With that he bounded up 
like a boy and said: " If it does, Asia will be indebted to that 



BUDA-PESTH—A BEAUTIFUL CITY. 359 

glorious land of the free which had the pluck to send that grand 
man, Perry, to draw back the bolts which had locked up Japan. 
That America and England should march hand in hand in the 
mighty cause." Ah, why does not England let her light shine on 
the Irishman as she does on the far away lands ! England cannot 
help playing the bully, even when she does good to the bullied. 
The Indian bends his neck, receives the good, and licks the hand, 
if it strikes, all the while in his heart hating the man who wields 
the hand. The Englishman cannot or will not understand the 
Irish character. His faults alone are seen, while his high-mettled 
spirit is ignored or misnamed. 

I said the trip from Varna here was a most charming one, but 
the portion of it which would be most pleasing to many people 
was spent at Buda-Pesth. This is a really very beautiful and most 
charming city, prettily situated, finely built, with good theatres, 
handsome public buildings, imposing churches, artistic monu- 
ments, elegant hotels, handsome promenades and drives, bright 
and airy cafes, galleries and museums, cheerful looking and gay 
people, and the prettiest women in the -world, nearly every class 
dressing in good taste. A noble river runs through it, spanned by 
bridges of fine architectural proportions, with keen, darting 
steamers constantly plying its waters, and picturesque views and 
charming parks and environs. There is here every concomitant 
necessary to make it one of the most attractive cities in Europe 
for strangers to visit. It is formed of the two old towns, Buda, 
which until captured by the Turks, was the residence of the Hun- 
garian kings, and Pesth, across the river, both Roman cities, and 
at different times during the decadence of the empire prominent 
towns. They are now united as one, and are the capital of 
the kingdom, with a palace for its king, and good though not 
magnificent buildings for public ofifices. It has a population of 
about 500,000, a large grain trade, manufactories of very elegant 
porcelain, excelling in majolica ware and now claiming that its 
glassware is equal to that of Bohemia. The streets are bending 
and broken (which, however, to me, but adds to their beauty), are 
well paved in granite block (consequently noisy), clean, and lined 
with a generally tasteful style of houses, but in the newer parts 
very fine residence and business structures. In several quarters 
there are bits of street view equal to any thing in Vienna, and 
the great residence street, Andrassy Strasse, about a mile and a 
quarter long and a hundred feet wide, straight and running from 
the centre of the town to the park at its outer end is not sur- 
passed, and hardly equalled, in beauty and elegance by any 
thoroughfare I can recall. The inner half of this noble street is 
solidly built, but in so artistic and varied architecture as not to 
look stiff. The other half has detached residences with grounds 
and plats, not large enough to give a suburban appearance, but 
yet enough to soften the picture and to appeal to the love of home 



360 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

taste. It is paved in closely laid wooden block, either new or 
kept in perfect repair. 

I am more than ever convinced that the excellence of street 
pavements depends more upon constant and methodical repair 
than upon the character and material of the work. It should be 
well planned, both as to the material used and the manner of 
doing, but a sleepless eye should be kept upon it, and disintegra- 
tion or yielding in any — even the smallest — part should at once 
be prevented. A small indenture, a slight unevenness is an enter- 
ing wedge for destruction. It should be an axiom that a bad 
pavement is no pavement. It may be costly to live up to this, 
but cities are costly luxuries at best. They are either cities or 
mere hives. Modern civilization is unwilling to live in hives ; it 
must therefore submit to the necessity of paying for cities, or go 
to the village or country. The pavements of the capitals of 
Hungary and Austria are noisy models. People soon cease to 
hear the noise, so wonderfully adaptable are the human senses. A 
miller can listen to and enjoy sweet music undisturbed by the 
clatter of his machinery. The denizen of a city " hears the 
silence " in the deep vaults of Mammoth Cave. The square 
Belgian block is here used instead of the long one, and the 
cleaning is so constant that one scarcely ever sees the sweeper. 
In the narrow, central street asphalt is much in vogue. It is, 
however, genuine, and not the contractors' darling — coal-tar. 

Pesth lies on a plain on the east side of the Danube, which some 
20 odd miles north bends from its long easterly course and 
runs due south for about 150 miles. The stream is confined 
between finely built stone walls, or quays, upon which lighting 
barges and small steamers, sharp pointed at both ends, and with 
rudders at each extremity, discharge their cargoes. Along this 
quay on the east bank runs a team and wagon road, under a 
second wall ; upon the upper level of this is the plateau of the town, 
and along its edge is the corso, a beautiful asphalted promenade 
exclusively for pedestrians. Along this corso are magnificent 
buildings of five stories, with considerable pretensions to archi- 
tectural excellence. Some of them are very fine. The corso has 
the full benefit of a fine water front, and yet, being elevated so 
much above the river, the unsightliness arising from the river 
commerce is not observed. On the corso are some handsome 
monuments, kiosk caf^s, and costly restaurants. Towards sun- 
down and during the long twilights, the promenade is filled with 
handsome people, gaily uniformed officers, ladies in their best 
walking costumes, business men and nobles. In one large square 
made by a public building standing back, is a pretty kiosk cafe, 
about which we saw seated perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 of the dite. I 
have never seen anywhere so many pretty out-door toilettes and 
so many beautiful women. Beauty was the rule instead of the 
exception ; some of it of so rare and delicate a type that my boys 
looked on with wide-eyed admiration. 



MARGUERITE ISLAND. 361 

On the opposite bank, or Buda side, are also fine buildings, but 
upon a narrow bank, from which hfts a hill varying from 150 to 
200 feet in height, crowned by a long line of public buildings, 
including the royal palace, and extending nearly a half mile on the 
steep slope of the hill are the palace gardens, terraced, with 
broad, zigzag walks, climbing by easy grade to the upper terrace, 
on which the palace stands. This hill is a long, narrow ridge, 
dropping to the river on one side and to the main town of (Ofen) 
old Buda on the other. Across a narrow valley, at one end of this 
ridge, running back from the river, under the end of the palace, 
rises a high eminence, perhaps 500 feet high, crowned by a pictur- 
esque fortress of large extent, and beyond the upper end of the 
public buildings and a mile or so away, lifts a yet much higher 
mountain, covered with villas and vineyards. These heights and 
their fortresses, palaces and distant villa residences make a 
beautiful picture from the corso, aided, too, by a couple of the 
prettiest bridges one can conceive of, the lower one with a single 
suspension span and the upper one with six long, elliptical, airy 
arches and above this a wooded island dividing the river into two 
broad arms. The picture from the palace berg is of another kind, 
for it lies below the beholder and is the beautiful city of Pesth, 
with its long row of superb houses bordering the water, on which 
pretty steamers and rowboats are constantly plying, and behind 
these the white-walled town and dark-tiled roofs, with enough 
trees intermixed to relieve the appearance of coldness and glare, 
and over beyond a sweeping country, framed in a long line of low 
hills. 

We visited our polite consul, Mr. Black, at his villa on the sum- 
mit of Schwabenberg, the high hill or low mountain I mentioned 
as lying above Buda. This we reached by a cog-wheeled railroad, 
running up a handsome wooded gorge, and, as we climbed, over- 
looking pretty valleys, with vineyards, villas, and wooded copses. 
From this elevation we had a grander tableau, the two — or, rather, 
twin — cities ; the river, with its islands stretching far to the south ; 
the wide country and low hills, all making a rare view. The 
island mentioned as being above one of the bridges is a long, nar- 
row, low-lying piece of ground belonging to the Archduke Joseph, 
who has spent vast sums in making it one of the most charming 
retreats imaginable. It is nearly a mile long, has beautiful old 
and many thrifty young trees, handsome shrubberies, with flower- 
beds and velvety lawns, a fine hotel, and one of the costliest baths 
of modern times. This is a long, architectural building, with 
lofty domes and frescoed roofs, and 50 odd commodious baths, 
constructed of marble, porcelain, and mosaic. Some of these are 
good-sized pools. In one of the larger ones I had a luxurious 
bath in hot mineral water, at a temperature of nearly 100 degrees 
Fahrenheit. The water comes in a copious stream from an arte- 
sian well, flowing 30 feet above the surface, and making a cascade 
over rock, looking as if made by time into heavy stalagmites. 



362 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

This fall is 30 or 40 feet wide, for so large is the stream. It is 
said to be highly beneficial in many diseases. At the upper end 
of the island, near the sanitarium, hotel, and baths, is a handsome 
cafe, where a large gypsy band plays ; at the other end another 
cafe with a military band. The island is the veritable home of 
singing-birds ; just at sundown it was simply alive with nightin- 
gales, and in its deeper shades at this season they were singing 
early in the afternoon. This island is named after Marguerite, 
the daughter of King Bela, and a celebrated saint in the calendar. 
It is certainly a delicious place, and, with its pure, river-cooled 
atmosphere, has a right to wear the purest of names. Other 
baths are on the mainland, and the remains of sumptuous ones 
erected by the Romans. 

I spoke of a gypsy band. There are about 50,000 of these 
people in Hungary. They are said to be natural musicians, play- 
ing on many instruments, and on all without note. We have 
heard several bands, one of them with 20 or 30 members ; all the 
instruments, except two or three, being stringed, chiefly violins, 
and always with a zither, or by a larger thing of the kind played 
upon by two wooden hammers. No notes whatever are used, and 
yet medleys were played where the changes seemed most intricate, 
all simply following the leader. I heard that very few ever know 
a note. Whistle a tune, and immediately they will all play it 
fairly. Their potpoiiris were a singular mixture of the airs of all 
nations. Left to their own choice, the music is wild, and some of 
it filled with a weird pathos. They have a tendency to too great 
loudness. I was told these bands are all over the kingdom, and 
are a sort of pets with the nobility, who have a queer way of get- 
ting a great deal out of them. They will cut a loo-florin note in 
half, give the leader one, and promise the other when the feast is 
over. The halves are worthless apart. In this way the wild fel- 
lows will play for two or three days at a time, barely stopping for 
food. The Hungarians keep up their feast, night and day, for two 
or more days. 

On Sunday I attended the Hungarian Derby. I am cosmopoli- 
tan or nothing, and in Rome do as the Romans do. There were 
some 20,000 people on the ground, a gay and bright set. Lager 
beer flowed freely, but not a drunken man was seen. The betting 
was frightful, not as to the amount wagered, but in its universal- 
ity. Everybody bought pools, and nothing was heard except talk 
of " gulden." I was amused by a party of clericals, two priests 
and two I took to be professors, in semi-clerical garb. They 
studied the programme with keen interest, and at the end of each 
race one of them went off to the pool-stand and bought his 
tickets. I think they were winners, for just as the steeple-chase 
began they were full of smiles and satisfaction. No one seemed 
to care for the speed of the racers, and watched them simply to 
see which came in ahead, so as to determine bets. The horses 



BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 363 

were large and strong, not far from 16 hands, I thought, and too 
heavy in the withers for good speeders. It would be a good idea 
if light and otherwise worthless horses were excluded from the 
turf, for then races would certainly improve stock by encouraging 
breeding for size as well as action. After the races, behind a 
handsome pair of horses, we drove up and down the drive in the 
park near the race course, and saw the turnouts. There were 
some fine four-in-hands, and some capital roadsters. The two 
most dashing young ladies Avere a couple of German actresses, 
whom I had seen on the grand-stand of the dite. I heard it was 
in connection with one of these that a petty scandal lately arose 
concerning Servia's king, Milan. To get rid of it he gave out that 
he "meant no harm." It is strange that the Lord's anointed can 
be naughty, and still stranger that the Lord so frequently makes 
such sad mistakes in His selections. Poor, weak human nature is 
liable to fearful temptations in Hungary, without the aid of Ger- 
many in sending down any of its sirens. I would advise Ameri- 
can ladies who visit Pesth with their husbands to be very loving 
to their liege lords while in this land of beauty. A loving wife or 
old age helps greatly to make a saint of a man. The beautiful 
Avomen of Pesth are certainly no detraction from Hungary's other 
charms. But I will have to admit they lace most fearfully. It is 
strange that a woman will so mar nature's mold of beauty. A 
very small waist is a deformity, not a beauty. And yet women 
ruin their health to reach a perfection of deformity. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

VIENNA— TAXES— THE VICE OF LOTTERY— AUSTRIAN DERBY— TIPS 
—RING STRASSE— MUSEUMS— ENVIRONS. 

Vienna, May 30, 1888. 

A FEW weeks ago Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, cele- 
brated the 40th anniversary of the commencement of his reign. If 
the success of his regime were to be measured by the growth of 
population and the splendor of the improvements of his capital, he 
certainly should have felt proudly satisfied as he rode along its 
streets on the 13th of May. When he lifted the veil from the 
pile of bronze and marble which so fittingly commemorates the 
glorious reign of the immortal Maria Theresa, and, looking about 
him, saw the magnificent public and private buildings in the 
vicinity, which are but a part — an epitome — of the whole of this 
beautiful city, he certainly could have had the right to expect 
that a grateful posterity would hereafter erect a grand monument 
to commemorate his own reign. I have not the ability to say 
whether such measurement would be correct or not. " No one," 
said the wise man of the long past, " can be called fortunate till 
after his death." A contemporary can call his king a great con- 
queror, but he cannot pronounce him a wise ruler. Time alone can 
apply the true touchstone and enable one to pass such judgment, 
A people may accumulate wealth and build noble edifices under a 
king ; they may be gay and happy, free and independent in their 
daily movements, and yet may be nursing the viper of poisonous 
immorality; may be cultivating the noxious plant, national 
luxury, and effeminate love of ease, while accumulating wealth 
and building monuments. Government may encourage these 
vices while giving apparent prosperity. 

The reign of the Mogul Aurungzebe was one of gorgeous 
splendor, but his kingdom was splitting into fragments while 
revelling. Pericles made Athens the seat of the world's art, but 
the Athenians, while all becoming connoisseurs, were losing their 
hardy manhood. Lycurgus was a harsh tyrant, and made Spar- 
tans use coarse food for luxuries and hard stones for beds ; but 
their muscles became iron, and their bravery was turned into 
heroism. Austria's emperor has built a wonderful capital and en- 
rolls a huge army, but the hated, plodding Jews are accumulating 

364 



A RAGE FOR GAMBLING. 365 

all the wealth, and the people are taught at the thresholds of 
churches to gamble. Pressed for means to exhibit grandeur, 
government has its lottery " cassas " everywhere — near cathe- 
drals, in museums, at austellungen, at railway stations — with 
placards displaying the tempting prizes to be won, and sells lottery 
tickets for five and ten kreutzers — that is, two and a quarter and 
four and a half cents. Every class buys tickets, and all are taught 
that it is a good thing to do. The porter stops at a corner, lays 
down his heavy burden for a moment, and buys a five-kreutzer 
carte ; a poor sewing-woman, trudging wearily home with her 
little daily wages, bends her steps aside to invest a part of her 
little earnings in tickets ; a beggar shows his bruised limbs and 
with his alms buys a ticket ; mothers going to St. Stephen's with 
their white-robed daughters, purely clad, to be united to holy 
church on confirmation day, pause in Stephen's place and pur- 
chase a billet with five kreutzers saved from the cost of flowers. 

Gambling is a rage. On Sunday I was at the Austrian Derby. 
There were 40,000 in attendance. All seemed intent as they 
were the Sunday before at Buda-Pesth on purchasing pools. No 
one cared a particle for the character of the horses or the beauty 
of their movements ; all were bent simply upon winning a prize 
or a place. I walked again and again through the surging mass ; 
I heard but one familiar word — " gulden," " gulden " — everywhere 
" gulden." All are intent upon getting something for nothing. 
Men and women pawn their clothes, pawn their cooking utensils, 
pawn any thing that a pawn-shop will take to get money to buy 
lottery tickets and racing pools. Suicides are, I am told, of fre- 
quent occurrence, because every thing, the last cent, has been 
spent in the vain hope of winning a prize, and when all is gone 
the grave is the dismal prize. The emperor's great-grandfather's 
monument has, in deep-cut letters, the enconium that he united 
the empire and preserved the church. I think it was the great- 
grandfather. Is the church being upheld by this fearful mode of 
raising money ? Maria Theresa sits on yonder square in all the 
majesty of blazing bronze. She is surrounded by her wise coun- 
sellors and heroic generals ; she herself is in colossal proportions ; 
the others are of heroic mould. If the spirit of the great empress 
hovers over her metallic brow and looks over this gorgeous city, 
is it satisfied when seeing her empire upheld by a system of rais- 
ing money which tends to uphold gambling ? Twenty odd mill- 
ions of lottery tickets were sold last year. Some say a vast deal 
more. The bulk of it is taken from the masses, and the govern- 
ment pocketed about $io,000,ooo as its profits. Time will tell 
whether his majesty's reign will be a good one or not. " No man 
can be called fortunate until after he be dead." 

Thirty-six years ago I spent a month or so in Vienna. It had 
400,000 people, and was a charming place for a young man to live 
in. A gulden would purchase more of comfort and pleasure than 



366 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a dollar would in America. There were a few good buildings, 
and around the " city " a picturesque old wall. Beyond this was 
a broad esplanade in trees and grass, marking where were once 
the fortifications which Napoleon had destroyed. Beyond this 
esplanade (glacis it was then called) were the vorstadten, or su- 
burbs, in which dwelt four fifths of the whole population. At or 
about sundown, the workshops principally in the " city," i. e., 
within the old walls, would pour out their thousands of toilers. 
I used to walk and talk with these (I was trying to learn German) 
when they crossed the broad esplanade going to their homes. 
The people seemed to be industrious, frugal, good-humored, and 
fairly contented. It was only when, after finding I was an Amer- 
ican, that a spirit of discontent would occasionally crop out, and 
it would then be shown that the memory of '48 was yet alive, and 
that Kossuth was considered something more than a rebel. There 
was luxury among the elite and nobility, but as a general thing 
there was not an air among the people of extravagance. The 
emperor was young and pale, and in his Austrian uniform of 
pure white, looked very youthful and slender, and with his blonde 
hair had almost a girlish appearance. He drove by the other day 
in the blue uniform of a general officer, and his beard and hair 
seemed perfectly white. He, too, has changed, but not more 
than the city he has so beautified. The old wall has gone, and 
in its place is a broad street 1 80 feet wide, with bridle-path, grass 
plats, and wide sidewalks with quadruple rows of trees, and over- 
looked by great buildings, nearly every one of palatial splendor. 

This, the celebrated Ring Strasse, is not a circular ring about 
the inner city, but is a succession of short, straight streets or 
boulevards, running into and meeting each other at very obtuse 
angles and making the inner city a great polygon. The lines of 
great structures are often separated by the width of a block, or 
somewhat less, leaving fine squares surrounded by palaces, muse- 
ums, and picture-galleries, by Parliament house, rathhaus, and 
churches, all erected by able architects and replete with architec- 
tural ornamentations. Some of the squares have in their centres 
monuments in high art, others are laid out in gardens, with fine 
trees and exquisite flower parterres and fountains. Back from 
the Ring Strasse on the outer side are streets more or less paral- 
lel with it, and bisected with narrower streets called alleys, in 
contradistinction to the lateral ones called streets. These streets 
and alleys, which cover the old esplanade, are lined with buildings 
little inferior to those on the Ring. The suburbs, with perhaps 
nine tenths of the population, and lying outside of these, have 
struggled to tear down the old and rebuild new houses, vying with 
those of the new Ring city. The city, inside of the old walls, is 
not much improved, and I can see many landmarks not wholly for- 
gotten. The new city is, however, unique in its manner of being 
laid out, and is unequalled in beauty anywhere else in the world. 



FRANCES JOSEPH AND HIS IMPRO VEMENTS. 367 

All of this has been brought about since Francis Joseph as- 
cended the throne 40 years ago. Are the people better off ? 
They are polite and kindly, and elegant in their manners, and 
seem cheerful. But, if I be not misinformed, their home life 
lacks nearly every concomitant necessary to make a real home. 
Taxed, probably in excess of any other people, they cannot have 
the house necessary for a home, and cannot afford to purchase the 
food needful for health or enjoyment. 

I have spoken of the frightful encouragement government gives 
to a spirit of gambling. Men cannot be made moral directly 
by law, or prepared for heaven by legal enactments. Laws 
cannot make men good, but laws can make men bad. That 
is the best law which leaves man as free as is possible for 
the safety of society ; which protects him in his life, liberty, 
and property, and leaves him free and able to cultivate ethics 
and religion. But when those in high places lead vicious 
lives the people are apt to catch the disease ; or when gov- 
ernment encourages immoral practices for its own gain, then 
government undermines the very life of its people. There are 
certain classes of vices which no law can prevent ; these may be 
controlled by government ; and to do so many of the best states- 
men think a judicious license system the wisest course. But 
when the powers that be encourage these vices for the purpose of 
gaining revenue, then they are as criminal as the participants in 
the vicious acts. Gambling grows out of a universal yearning in 
man for excitement, and the equally universal desire to gain 
something for nothing ; to eat, drink, and be merry without work. 
Woe to the government which feeds this human weakness ! It 
may gain revenue to-day, but it saps the very foundation of soci- 
ety by making plodding industry unpopular, and alluring men to 
cultivate those desires which should be subdued. 

The Emperor of Austria has one of the most difffcult of empires 
to govern. It is composed of many nationalities and many peoples 
speaking different languages, each jealous of the other, and some 
of them absolutely hating some of the others. Each of these 
strives for ascendency. The result is, there is the German party, 
the Bohemian party, the Slavonic party, the Hungarian, and half 
a dozen other parties. These heterogeneous peoples are hard to 
hold in hand ; and Austria has a constant danger in a war which 
may arouse the separate nationalities. For ages the Austrians 
have shown an unconquerable hostility to the Jews. Some time 
since it was proclaimed that this was about to end ; that the 
Austrian Rothschild had been admitted to court and now had 
the right of entree into Hof circles. It seems, however, that this 
did not arise from any liberal change of heart on the part of the 
people. The government saw a speck of war on the horizon, and 
was looking around to find where it could raise some millions. 
The wily Jew saw a chance. He let it be known that if he and 



368 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

his family were not good enough to enter the palace his money 
was not good enough to go into the treasury. He received his 
card and now Hof doors open to him. But ever since then a 
bitterer feeling exists among the people towards the Jew than 
ever before. The Jews, however, are at the top of the heap. 
They own the finest buildings and the richest property in Buda- 
Pesth and many here. They own many of the mines. They own 
some of the petroleum wells of Russia, that is, Rothschild does, 
and therefore gets the Russian oil in here on terms very unfriendly 
to the American product. They own all, or nearly all, the print- 
ing establishments in Vienna and run the papers. The Austrians 
are like the rat gnawing the file — they can swear and grit their 
teeth, but the file yields up none of its hardness. 

An anti-Jew party exists and openly proclaims itself in Parlia- 
ment. When the old German Kaiser lay on his last bed a paper 
here announced his death before the fact. The anti-Semitic 
leader in Parliament tried to bring the newspaper men to their 
knees — and he lies in prison for his rashness. When the Maria 
Theresa statue was about to be unveiled many thousands — all 
Germans, I am told — sang one night near the monument the 
" Wacht am Rhein." Some of the leaders were arrested. The 
government encouraged the idea that this was a purely anti- 
Semitic proceeding ; that the meeting was simply in honor of the 
man who is in prison and whose house is near by ; and I hear 
that Germany's chancellor encouraged this belief and advised the 
rulers here to take that position and to punish the singers. 
Shrewd men, however, assert that the thing was, in fact, a Ger- 
man meeting, as such. But it will not do for the people to think 
there is such a feeling existing among the many million Germans 
who are subjects of this empire ; and although the chancellor 
knows that there is a strong German party here, he also knows 
that Germany does not want any German complications in 
Austria ; he knows that Francis Joseph's kingdom is the strong- 
est wall which can possibly be kept between the Russian and the 
Prussian ; that if Austria should be destroyed a huge part of its 
people are more in sympathy with Russia than with Germany, 
and would in all probability side with the bear. Therefore he 
advised that the trouble near the great empress* statue should 
be treated purely as an anti-Semitic outburst. Queer if the 
" Wacht am Rhein " has become a new watchword against the 
Israelites. All of this I hear. I am only a voyageur, seeing as I 
run, and claim the inestimable right of changing my mind when 
I learn better. 

I said this was one of the most heavily taxed of all people. 
There is no real-estate tax, as understood by us. A house is 
taxed either on its rental or on its number of habitable rooms, or 
on both. A rich man's house of a dozen magnificent rooms pays 
the same tax as a poorly built boarding-house with a like number 



THE JEWS OF VIENNA. TAXES. 369 

of rooms. A man pointed out to me a large building with a huge 
restaurant on the ground floor and flats overhead, and told me 
that 32 per cent, of its rents were paid to government — municipal 
and national — in taxes. I have taken some pains to learn what 
are the rates paid here. It would be tedious to write them down. 
But it is enough to say that the average tax paid in the large 
cities which levy an octroi duty is 45 per cent, of the individual 
incomes. An octroi duty is levied in some eight to ten (I think) 
cities on ever}^ article of food or drink which comes into them. 
There is but one edible which gets into Vienna without this pay- 
ment, and that is the eggs which pigeons lay on St. Stephen's 
noble tower. The owner of buildings directly pays the tax, but, 
of course, the occupants are really the ultimate tax-payers. The 
result is that few people here have flats large enough to entertain 
their friends. Their social life is consequently in the cafes, 
restaurants, and beer-halls. They eat a frugal meal at home, and 
spend their evenings in some establishment with friends, taking 
lager and nibbling bread and cheese, with, when they can, a dish 
of meat. Families, who appear in public well dressed, elegant, 
and well-to-do people, have not, frequently, sleeping-rooms for the 
daughter and son of the house. The young lady sleeps on a scfa 
in the parlor and the brother on a sofa in the hall. And why? Be- 
cause the taxes on the house-rooms, the taxes on their business, 
are so high that they cannot afford rooms for all. A genuine 
home life is the highest encourager of virtue and economy. What 
with the house tax, the income tax, the farm tax, and others use- 
less to name, it is a struggle for the people to get through the 
year, and true home life is hardly known. 

A man's business is taxed as a manufacturing one, even if he 
carries it on in his own house and employs no other laborers than 
himself and his children. I was given an instance of the weight 
of this burden. A man carried on his business in a flat, say 30 by 
50 feet, a part of it being cut off for his family living rooms. The 
entire income from his business was about 3,200 gulden, of this 
he paid over 1,000 for his manufacturers' tax. But this was only 
a part of his burden. His landlord paid nearly 50 per cent, of 
his rental as a house tax. This the tenant partly paid. He paid 
taxes on the bread and coffee he had for his breakfast, on the 
lean beef and potatoes he had for his dinner, on the beer and 
bread he and his family enjoyed when they went to a garden or 
caf^ for evening society. 

The taxes in the octroi paying cities are, as far as I can learn, 
between 44 and 46 per cent, on houses; in other towns and in the 
country about 30 to 35 per cent. ; that is, upon the available pro- 
ceeds of the several properties and upon industries of every kind ; 
manufacturing, farming, etc., from 30 to 50 per cent, upon a man's 
entire earnings. These data I have not taken from public docu- 
ments, but from informed persons. The whole system of taxes. 



370 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

seems to be laid so as to touch as little as possible the rich and 
the noble. A grand park, a great shooting forest pays no tax. 
A stable with its stud, or filled with costly saddle and carriage 
horses, pays no tax, nor does the farmer's ; but while the former 
costs thousands and is an article de luxe, the latter is of lattice or 
boards and is for industrial purposes. The palace, with courts, 
porticoes, and halls, pays only a tax upon the rooms fitted for 
habitation ; and such rooms, which are possibly larger than the 
ordinary man's whole house, pays no more than the little sleeping- 
rooms of the laborer. A village hotel with 20 rooms pays the 
same tax as the grand chateau on a hill with 20 living rooms and 
a park of 500 acres. 

A single man or, indeed, a man of small means, can live here 
very cheaply and have a great many charming amusements, 
equalled nowhere else excepting Paris. He must be satisfied, 
however, with a light breakfast of coffee and simple bread. He 
must not expect even to taste soup in which a shin bone has 
taken a bath — perhaps there may be a suspicion of a scrap in the 
pot. But, usually, if any thing is seen resembling grease on the 
soup plate it was simply put on for show. He must not expect 
much variety in his meats. He will do well if several eat to- 
gether, each one taking a dish and then dividing up. His beer 
costs nearly as much as in Chicago. Wine is cheap and good. 
But generous livers, or fat livers, as our laboring people are, 
will have to pay more here for subsistence than in America, 
and, while so living, will receive less than one third of the wages. 
And yet, with all of this true, we find that the man who most 
loudly inveighs against American laws ; the man who says that 
laws are all a curse, and that no government is better than any 
government, and that in America the poor man is but the rich 
man's unwilling slave ; the man who talks most of this stuff, will 
be found to have come from some part of Austria. It seems as 
If the oppression of the government under which he was bora 
and has grown up has so embittered his soul that he hates the 
very name of government. I hope this feeling lies in the heart 
'of only a few who seek asylum on our shores. It would be a sad 
day, should America have to shut her doors against the oppressed 
of other lands, and the down-trodden. 

Vienna is not only a beautiful city, but is a most charming one 
to the tourist. Here he has beautiful drives and delightful 
promenades; a magnificent opera-house in which the opera is 
generally well rendered ; fine theatres, one just finished most 
elegant ; fine hotels and in large numbers, and the best of all 
garden music. 

The Prater is a park of 4,000 odd acres; on one avenue in it, 
and all close together, are some six or eight beer and coffee 
gardens, with tables and seats under fine trees, with the fragrance 
of flowers filling the air, and with bands of music, military and 



THE PRATER. TIPS. 371 

stringed, of so good a character that they can satisfy the most cul- 
tivated ear. Here are accommodations for many thousands, and 
on afternoons and evenings of summer days, thousands of the 
nicest people are promenading or seated, taking their evening 
meals, listening to the fine music and watching each other. The 
dingy room is left behind, and here a man brings his family and 
over his lager makes his home. In another avenue, not far off, 
are cheap amusements of every kind — light theatres, games, 
puppet shows, flying Dutchmen — in fact, every possible kind of 
fun to be had for a few kreutzers. Here, too, are thousands of 
those who seek much pleasure at little cost. Here a thoughtful 
tourist can learn a vast deal of life and human nature in a short 
time and at little expense. Vienna, one would think, is all on the 
Prater in the late afternoon and early evening ; but Vienna is a 
city which claims about 1,000,000 population and no one stays at 
home up to ten o'clock. The town, however, seems to shut its 
mighty jaws at ten and the streets are comparatively deserted, and 
all because of the porter and his tip. 

The tip (trink-geld) is as decided a feature in this city as is 
backshish in the worst town in the Orient. You go into a caf6 ; a 
waiter brings you coffee, another bread and a paper. Each 
expects a tip. When you are through the head waiter comes for 
the pay. He expects a tip. You go into a restaurant ; one 
waiter brings you food, another your wine, a third your bread, and 
a fourth collects the change. Each expects a tip, and they all 
wear such nice full suits of black, and such white cravats that it is 
hard to resist their polite smiles. But woe to the man, who, 
failing to tip them, returns! Their memories are wonderfully 
tenacious and the forgetful man will find it out. When he sees 
three or four near him waited upon who came after he had been 
seated, and sees a nice, juicy piece of roast on the next table, 
while he is wearing his teeth away on the toughest gristle of the 
toughest beast that had roamed the fields, he will swear and 
resolve to resist the villainous custom, but after a while he will do 
as the Viennese do — pay and quarrel not. They all say it is an 
outrageous custom ; but they shrug their shoulders and ask : 
" What are we to do?" "Why, resist." "Ah! sir, life is too 
short." Now, what has this to do with getting in early? This: 
Every house with its flats has its porter, and this porter closes the 
front door at ten, and the lodger who is then out stays out, or pays 
the porter a half gulden to let him in. In cheaper houses a 
quarter gulden. Now a half gulden or a quarter gulden is a great 
deal to a man whose daily wage is only one or two gulden, and 
that one or two has been left at the theatre, the garden or a caf^. 
Ergo, he goes home before ten. 

Besides the gardens in the parks, the city abounds in large and 
elegant coffee houses, places capable each of seating at little 
tables several hundred. They are in amazing numbers and in 



37 2 A RACE WITH THE SC/JV. 

every locality and to suit every purse. Vienna possesses several 
fine picture galleries and museums. In them there are none of 
those c/ie/s d'ceiivre which constitute the great gems of art and 
the world's wonders; but there is in them an evenness of excel- 
lence surpassed by few galleries in other cities. The treasury 
contains jewels, crowns, diamonds, rubies, all exquisite gems, 
highly chased works in gold and silver, and goblets and tankards 
in ivory and crystal of surpassing excellence, and the collection 
of antic[uities is rich and valuable. In the galleries, museums, and 
collections the student, the lover of art and the searcher after the 
beautiful, can profitably spend weeks. Close by the city there are 
fine excursions, delicious valleys, cloistered gardens and high 
eminences. From the summit of Carlenberg, reached in an hour 
by street and steam rail, and by a cog-wheel road, is presented a 
picture of deliciously wooded mountains, villas and vineyards, 
spreading, cultivated country, with broad, meandering waters and 
vast city life, second only to that from the mountain above 
Scutari, overlooking Constantinople and the Bosphorus. There 
are, however, many other which pleased me more, which sank into 
my very soul. They were simple scenes which others, perhaps, 
might not admire, but which suggested to me a world of thought 
and dreams of delight. The grand view, however, made no such 
impression. There is too much of man's work in the great city 
mapped out below me in the centre of the vast amphitheatre of 
20 miles across and fringed by the high, wooded hills and distant 
mountains ; too much which is suggestive of toil and ambition to 
suit my taste, but still, as a cold picture it is wonderful. I like to 
look upon a landscape, natural or on canvas, which points out 
some half hidden nook, into which I would like to steal and 
dream away an hour ; or a mountain crag, near which I would love 
to climb and utter a shout, and then listen to my voice as it rolls 
among deep caverns or is caught and hurled from bold precipice 
back to me in musical echo. 

If one loves to live among holy men of the past and to hear 
their heart-felt prayers uttered to a pitying Redeemer, he can be 
gratified here in the solemn chapels and lofty nave of St. 
Stephen's church, — into which the sunlight steals through deep 
windows of richly stained glass — surrounded by holy pictures, 
deeply moved by the tones of the old organ, and awed into 
solemn thoughts; he can then go out and look up to the noble 
tower whose spire points to heaven 470 feet above where he 
stands. A Gothic church, however, vainly appeals to my imagi- 
nation ; it is too cold, too vault-like, too fitting for a tomb and for 
dead men's bones. The mighty dome, with its rounded vault, 
resembling heaven's high, sunlit arch, with the light of heaven 
coming in from far above — this and these make the church which 
arouses my heart and touches it with religious feeling. I care not 
for the Gothic church ; it was the invention of ascetic monks and 



VOLKS-GARTEN. 373 

lately enslaved Christians, who had not learned to regard religion 
as a thing of love, but simply as a matter of hard justice. 

To-day has been one of Vienna's great holidays. I do not 
know how it is called, but it follows the May confirmations. 
Stephen's platz and the streets leading to it were packed by 
thousands coming to see the procession, the eight-in-hand of the 
kaiser, and the six and four horse carriages of other members of 
the imperial family going to high service in the old cathedral. 
These evidences of pomp are pleasing to the people, but to an 
American it is yet more pleasing to see the plain carriage drawn 
by a handsome pair, with the ruler of the nation riding as a 
simple officer unattended by out-riders or guards, as he so often 
does. It is a pleasing thing to us simple folks to see the graceful 
young crown princess driving along the crowded Prater Haupt- 
allee and returning with cordial bow the generous respect 
shown by the people, and the prince, heir to the Austrian 
diadem, with the ribbons guiding a blooded team on the Ring 
Strasse. Poor Stephanie! it still looks as if the Austrian crown 
would have to shine on the head of a daughter of the house of 
Hapsburg instead of a son. 

For the benefit of some of my fair friends I will say, that at the 
races on Sunday the princess occupied the front of the royal 
pavilion. She was attended by two ladies. I could not catch the 
style of her dress, but her hat was so covered by a mass of red 
ostrich feathers that it resembled a high crimson helmet. Her 
attendant ladies wore pretty bonnets, ornamented only with lace, 
ribbons, and a few flowers. In the grounds about the grand- 
stand for the elite were very many pretty ladies, dressed in ex- 
quisite out-door costumes, — silks of bright styles on the married 
ones ; white and more simple robes adorned the young ladies. 

One of the most charming places in Vienna is the Volks-garten, 
especially on the Strauss evenings. Three times a week Edward 
Strauss, with his wonderful orchestra, delights the lovers of music. 
Nearly 30 years ago Johann and Joseph started these summer con- 
certs. Then Edward came into the trio. The first two are gone 
where there is an endless choir, but the brother keeps up the rep- 
utation of the garden, and fills it with delighted listeners, who 
drink, eat, talk, and possibly flirt to a music nowhere else equalled. 
Alternately pieces are given by the great leader and by a military 
band of highly finished artists. Here one can pass a summer's 
evening listening and dreaming, dreaming and listening. I like 
opera, but am not educated up to the mark ; I can take in all of- 
Strauss. When he played Chopin's funeral march a few evenings 
since I felt one could go to his own funeral without a sigh if he 
had this band to accompany his bier. Willie and I go from this 
to Russia. Johnie, prefering a tour through Germany, here quits 
us. I hope the paws of the bear will be soft. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

RUN TO MOSCOW— WARSAW— THE POLES— SOBIESKI'S PALACE- 
PEASANTS. 

Moscow, yune 6th {or May 25, old style), 1888. 

From Vienna to Moscow, through Warsaw, is about 1,250 
miles by rail; that is, to Graniza, on the Polish frontier, 250, and 
thence onward 1,511 versts, or 1,007^ miles; time to the Polish 
capital, 18 hours ; thence on here 34^ hours. We left Vienna at 
noon on the 1st of June, and had a very pretty run till the close of 
twilight, which was not until considerably past nine o'clock, for we 
were already nearly in latitude 51 degrees. From Vienna, which 
lies in a sort of basin, the country was for some two hours rather 
flat, or low undulating, well cultivated, and quite rich. We then 
entered low hills, and turning the western end of the little Car- 
pathian Mountains had charming scenery ; valleys with villages of 
comfortable houses ; fields bright and green, often bordered with 
trees ; scattered copses of wood, and low mountains from 400 to 
500 feet high, clothed with forest, and now and then crowned by 
a castle or old keep ; some of the large villages, with their white 
plastered houses, roofed in red tile, surrounding a tasteful church, 
with orchards and scattered fruit trees, were really pretty. Other 
villages were of thatched roofs, and were picturesque. The whole 
of Moravia, through which we ran for some six hours, seemed to 
have a cheerful population, if one could judge by looking at the 
crowds collected about the stations. I noticed everywhere signs 
or names which showed that there was little difference between 
the Bohemian and Moravian language, and the general appearance 
of the people proved them to be Czechs. At one point we were 
for some time within sight of tall chimneys, from which poured 
long lines of smoke. This is the principal mining district of 
Austria, or, as a gentleman informed me, the Birmingham and 
Shefifield region of the empire. 

Our run carried us near two famous points in the history of 
Napoleon — Wagram and Austerlitz — and not far off was another 
name, which, when I was a boy, always awoke in my heart a feel- 
ing of indignation — Olmutz, where the friend of America, La- 
fayette, was so long imprisoned. I felt disposed to stop and make 
a pilgrimage to its old donjon keep, but could not break thejour- 

374 



RUSSIAN TIME. 375 

ney on my ticket. How certain impressions of childhood last, and 
what hold they often take upon the imagination ! When La- 
fayette was in Lexington, Ky., in 1825, I was a babe in arms. 
My mother, living in the country, could not leave me behind when 
she went to town to see the great French republican. Standing 
in a crowd when he passed near, she held her child towards him. 
He laid his hand upon its head. I have never been able to rid 
myself of the feeling that I remembered his appearance, and that 
his touch had almost hallowed my brow. One of the early books 
given me was a life of Lafayette. My blood almost tingled when 
I read of Olmutz' dungeon, and its name has ever since been 
readily brought to mind. Napoleon's name awakens the French- 
man to a love of glory; but Lafayette's lies close to the spot 
whence spring the heart-beats in an American's breast. 

I said in my last that I hoped to find the claw of the Russian 
bear lined with velvet. Its first touch upon our shoulders was 
certainly not unkind. The ofificers of the custom-house at Graniza 
were courteous, and passed our little baggage through with only 
perfunctory examination, and the conductors and servants of the 
railroad have been polite and attentive, and, seeing our entire 
ignorance of the langauge, have invariably put themselves to some 
trouble to enable us to get over difficulties. This they have done, 
too, without any apparent expectation of reward. Our first night 
was short, and an early daybreak enabled us to see the country for 
two hours before reaching Warsaw at six A.M. The railway car- 
riages are good, and so fashioned that we did not find it necessary 
to take the sleeper. The sleeper has only one window to each 
compartment, and, there being already one occupant in each, we 
found our opportunity for looking out to be limited. The ordi- 
nary car gave us full facilities for drawing out the seats and making 
a very comfortable bed. The country traversed in Poland after 
daybreak was flat, but very productive, and the waving rye, al- 
ready headed, was bending under the breeze ; the winter wheat is 
not yet in head, and the spring crop is now being sown. I asked 
a gentleman if it was not very late to be putting in this crop. His 
reply was that " We always do this in May." " But," I said, 
"this is June." "O no! It is only the 20th of May." Then I 
found I was 12 days younger than I was the day before. We had 
left Austria on June ist; we entered Russia May 21st. I shall 
stick to the old style as long as possible. How readily an old man 
catches at any straw which seems to float him back, even in fancy, 
towards his youth ! 

So intent was I in looking out upon the land of Kosciusko — 
another name dear to the American — so carried back into the 
past with the tales of heroism and the legends of daring which 
cluster about the name of Poland ; so filled with its love of free- 
dom — often misplaced, but never dying — sorrowing over its sor- 
rows, and sighing over its woes, that I did not notice that we were 



376 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

even approaching its capital until our fellow passengers began to 
prepare for leaving the car, and then I found we were already in 
Warsaw. Warsaw ! The home of John Sobieski, who hurled the 
Turk back from the walls of Vienna as a ball thrown from a bat, 
and near which Kosciusko fought his last fight in 1794, and, bleed- 
ing, fell into the hands of his country's conqueror. 

The capital of Poland for the last four centuries, lies upon the 
Vistula. The Prague suburb, upon a low, flat plain upon the 
right bank, of scattered houses, with gardens and cattle-yards, 
and railroad depots, was once closely built and had a considera- 
ble population, but the bloody Suvaroff burnt it in 1794, and 
butchered in indiscriminate slaughter its 15,000 to 20,000 people. 
A fine and most solidly sustained bridge connects it with the 
main city lying on quite an elevation, which, viewed from this 
suburb, presents, with its fine palace, citadel, parks, and many 
churches, a very pleasing appearance. It cannot be called a 
handsome city, but is interesting, with some fine public buildings, 
a large park, squatted down in its very centre, and adorned with 
fountains, fish-ponds, and summer theatres, fine old trees, mostly 
horse-chestnuts ; with fairly broad streets in the newer city lined 
with good houses, and quaint tall old houses, three to four cen- 
turies old, jutting in and out upon the narrow, crooked streets of 
the old city. These, coupled with historic associations and Polish 
legends running back far into the dim past, make the place inter- 
esting, at least to an American in whose mind patriotic devotion, 
bold deeds, and long suffering are always suggested by the very 
name of Poland. 

Warszawa (Polish) has a population of perhaps 425,000 and a 
garrison at this time amounting to 25,000. There are a great 
many Jews, who, I learn, are industrious, persevering, and provi- 
dent, and in large proportion thoroughly orthodox. Their large 
quarter on Saturday was all shut up, and the people — men, women, 
and children, — were thoroughly attendant at the synagogues. 
One of these places of worship is full of interest, containing many 
treasures of the past. The Jews of Poland number about 1,000,- 
000, and are distinguishable wherever seen by their marked cast 
of features, long, ungainly coats, ugly top-boots, low, drooping 
caps, and solemn faces. I have never seen in any country any 
thing even approaching the solemn visages shown by the Hebrews 
of Poland. They are not stern and somewhat contemptuous, as 
are the faces of the Arabs, nor proud and fanatic, as are those of 
the Turks in the interior towns of Asia Minor, nor searching and 
grasping as those of the Armenians. Their solemnity is of a 
melancholy type, and arises, I suspect, from ages of endurance, 
forbearance, and persecution, and looks as if it were taught in 
their homes and studied at all times. 

The Jews of Holland are rather cringing in manner, but always 
keen in appearance. Those of Germany, London, and perhaps 



THE JEWS. POLISH LANGUAGE. 377 

of America, are rather self-assertive, confident, and pushing. 
Those of Poland look as if they desired to escape attention and 
wish simply to be let alone. Remember, I write mere impres- 
sions, and do not wish to assert. But to me one of the important 
factors of the present world are the descendants of Abraham. 
Many of them I like, a liking grown out of close companionship. 
They have their faults, and grave ones ; many of their manner- 
isms are unattractive but are eradicable, and therefore to be over- 
looked in an examination of their characteristics and a forecast of 
their future. They measure their ethics too much by the rule of 
law ; they too often think what is lawful is therefore honorable ; 
they are too prone to stand by the bond though it be wet with 
tears or gory with the pound of flesh. These things are welded 
into their nature by their theology, and then tempered into the 
hardness of steel by ages of contumely from all the world. With- 
out a government of their own for nearly twenty centuries, with- 
out a land they can claim for themselves during all this vast 
period, they have had an autonomy of territory thoroughly 
marked, a territory bounded by the limits marked on the earth's 
crust by the rays of a warming sun. Despised, they are self- 
reliant ; robbed, they have accumulated the exchangeable gov- 
erning valuables of the world ; debarred the salons of rulers, 
kings are their puppets, and imperial governments are their in- 
struments, whose stops they manipulate as the musician manipu- 
lates his flute. They are a book whose pages the thoughtful man 
should study wherever he can part the leaves. Who can tell 
what the last page, yet unwritten, may reveal ? 

The Poles tell me with pride that theirs is a kingdom, and that 
the Czar rules it as king of Poland ; .that they elect their own 
mayors and speak their own language ; and yet one sees over 
every shop the name and business of the proprietor in Russian as 
well as Polish, and all law-court proceedings, and all official com- 
munications, however small, are in the language of the ruler, and 
that by law. All means possible are being used to russianize the 
country. This may, perhaps, seem harsh to its 7,000,000 of people, 
who have a rich and copious language of their own, a language 
which has had the sanction of a thousand years, and in which 
able universities taught for centuries ; but it is the part of wise 
statesmanship. A nation should be homogeneous, and to be this 
requires a common language. One of the causes of w^eakness of 
Austria is the several languages spoken by its different peoples. 
As an admirer of the Pole I would regret much to see his language 
proscribed, but I must admit that I cannot blame Russia's em- 
peror for his endeavor to have his every subject speak Russian. 
A common language helps to develop common thought. Com- 
mon thought develops homogeneity of character. The Czar 
wishes to rule a nation, not a system of separate and distinct 
nations. To wipe out these separate nationalities and to weld 



378 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

them into one must burn into many a racial nerve and give in- 
tense agony. We may regret the necessity and hate the doer, 
but we are forced to acknowledge his wisdom. The Lord put an 
end to the growth of heaven's insult, " the Tower of Babel," 
by introducing a babel of tongues. 

While the Hebrews of Poland struck me as so solemn a people, 
the Poles themselves seem cheerful. Not with the insouciant 
cheerfulness of the Frenchman, nor the easy, cheerful manner of 
the Austrian, who seems almost as much a seeker after pleasure 
as the Gaul, but with a rather bright demeanor and with chatty, 
agreeable manners. 

The present rulers are determined to hold Warsaw. Not only 
have they made their language necessary in the courts, but all the 
old universities have been destroyed, and the people, after the 
trouble of 1 830, were forced to erect, at their own cost, a huge 
citadel, or rather fortifications, in the city, to be used, if neces- 
sary, against it, about and around which the very earth, I am 
informed, is mined and countermined, so that an uprising attempt- 
ing to carry it can be hurled into ruin. Here state prisoners are 
confined, and sometimes executed. Our intelligent guide, who 
lived a while in America, pointed out the prison in which Nihil- 
ists have been, and some now are, confined. Some of the prisons 
are entirely underground. The whole thing is certainly a dan- 
gerous neighbor for a city disposed to be rebellious. This, how- 
ever, I was told, the Warsaw people are no longer inclined to be. 
No better evidence can be given of the emperor's confidence in 
the good intentions of the people than the fact that when he 
visits Warsaw he drives about in an unostentatious manner, 
wholly unattended by guards. This certainly is wise. A king 
cannot better win the good feeling of his people than by showing 
his trust in them. The great emperor whose remains are yet 
mouldering in Germany, was fired upon, yet he showed the Ger- 
mans that he trusted them by constantly exposing himself, and 
the last drop of German blood was his to command. 

Besides the " Saxon " garden in the heart of Warsaw, there is a 
large and very beautiful park close by, once the property of 
Poniatowski, and in which is a pretty summer palace upon a fine 
sheet of water, and a unique open theatre ; the uncovered amphi- 
theatre is in imitation of an ancient structure, with a stage on a 
little island in an apparent semicircular ruin of handsome 
columns, a sheet of water thus lying between the performers and 
the audience. This is a veritable gem, and must be an exquisite 
place for a play on a moonlight night. Our proud guide pointed 
to it with enthusiasm as he said : " Gen. Sherman, when here, 
could not help crying out : ' Why, this is a perfect fairy scene.' " 
I can readily believe the grim, yet enthusiastic, old soldier might 
have so spoken. Leading to this park is a broad boulevard, a 
mile long, shaded by old lime trees and bordered by palaces of 
noble and elegant residences of rich citizens. 



VILLA NOV. SOBIESKI. 379' 

There are quite a number of fine statues of public men in 
different parts of the city, but the one which held our attention 
most was that of Copernicus, by Thorwaldsen, sitting in an easy 
attitude and holding the globe in his hand. The Poles should be 
proud of their warrior, Sobieski ; of their patriot, Kosciusko, but 
even yet prouder of their great philosopher and astronomer. He 
sits here in quiet but deep meditation. The world most admires 
its men of deeds ; but after all he does most whose deeds are 
mighty thoughts. A drive of an hour through waving fields of 
rye on the estates of the Countess Potoscka brought us to the 
palace of Villanov, her property, built by Sobieski, his last home 
and where he died. It is a beautiful building in a fine garden or 
park of old trees, pretty lakelets, and wonderful lilac trees, whose 
rounded heads were a simple mass of bloom, filling the air with 
delicious fragrance. I will here remark that for weeks we have 
been journeying with the spring and its flowers, and now the 
cherry and lilac are barely in full bloom. They have kept with 
us since we left Egypt, and the acacia or locust, which had 
partially dropped its flower in Greece, was perfection in Con- 
stantinople and Roumania, well out in Vienna, is now hardly 
white, and the air in orchards is just now redolent of apple- 
blossoms. 

Villanov possesses fine paintings, some of them very valuable, 
a good collection of china and Etruscan ware, and is, in fact, a 
charming museum, but yet more interesting are the rooms occu- 
pied by the great Pole, still just as they .were when he last 
tenanted them, even the bed on which he died. Here are his old 
clocks and arms, the garments he wore, his saddles, horse-harness, 
and sword, his rich presents, given by the pope and others after 
his glorious victories over the Turks ; his plate, gifts from dis- 
tinguished men, and on the walls hang the tapestry and paintings 
on which he rested his eyes after his hard-fought campaigns. It 
is said he built the house through the labor of Turks he had taken 
as prisoners of war. This palace and its contents are all the more 
interesting from the fact that the galleries of Warsaw were robbed 
of their fine royal portraits, which were taken to adorn the walls 
of the treasure-house at Moscow. My young friends will not feel 
any less interest in this beautiful place when I tell them that here 
was laid a part of the scene of much of that charming love story, 
"Thaddeus of Warsaw." Boys and girls, how many of you have 
read its thrilling love passages and failed to weep over its touch- 
ing pathos? If any, then you were not as I, for I am not ashamed 
to confess that I not only wept over the book, but sobbed as if 
my heart would break, and I was over 12 years old, too, when I 
did it. Here in this palace are pointed out the rooms in which 
Thaddeus played and loved. He was great to you and me, girls, 
when we did not care a fig for John, the warrior. Here is his 
picture, and a pretty face was pointed out to us as hers he so 
loved. He was a pretty boy, and his hair was cut like John 



38o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Sobieski's, but it was not all shaven back from his temples and 
around over his ears and on the back of his neck as the warrior's 
was. I do not remember the book well. I only know that it 
made me shed many a tear, and I thought Jane Porter the 
paragon of historians. 

The ride from the capital of Poland to Moscow was interesting 
simply because it was in Russia. A large part of it was through 
low, flat, half-swamp plains, covered with birch and small pines ; 
then over low, flat lands, partially cultivated, and many of the 
fields promising crops which we in America would scarcely think 
worth harvesting. As in Poland, rye was the main growth until 
during the latter half of the last day, when spring wheat pre- 
dominated. I suspect the crops suffer much from want of deep 
plowing. In Roumania I wrote that they break the ground with 
six oxen and plow deep and well. Here this work is done with 
a single horse, and the plow does not enter the soil over two 
inches. They -use a queer, old-fashioned tool with two light 
shares, and the horse draws between a pair of shafts which lie on 
a level ; the beam, of which the plowshare makes the point — or 
rather the two beams lying close together — are from four to five 
feet high, and morticed into the cross-bar at the rear of the 
shafts. It will not make our eight-hour people love this country 
when I tell them I saw people working in the fields a little after 
four in the morning and until nine o'clock in the evening. Women 
seem to do the bulk of the farm work, and sturdy, hardy-looking 
women they are. They wear coarse clothes and live on rye bread. 
In Moscow I have seen street pavers, men and women, stop for 
their breakfast, which was simple rye bread washed down with 
water. From light to dark is the term of a day's labor, with poor 
pay and poor food. My laboring friends at home, give warm 
thanks to the Giver of all good that your lots are cast in a land 
of freedom, where men work, not fight ; where women are rosy 
companions, and not mere beasts of burden ; where you can do a 
fair day's work and get a fair day's wage ; where your children 
can read and write, and are not compelled to watch flocks all day 
in the fields, and be constantly the companions of sheep and of 
swine ; where, if you are industrious, sober, and economical, you 
can, if in health, always lay by enough to keep the wolf away in 
your old age. 

From Minsk to Moscow we were continuously near the line of 
march of the French in 1812, and of their subsequent disastrous 
retreat ; through Kresnoe, where Ney left 26,000 prisoners and 
nearly all of his guns and his vast train of stores ; through 
Smolensk, famous in many an old war, and where the example 
was set, in 1812, for Moscow to follow, in fighting the irresistible 
invading army with fire. Here the destruction of the French 
was so great when on their retreat, that the then successful 
Russians burned the dead in vast trenches over a third of a rnile in 



FRENCH RETREAT. ■ 38 1 

length ; and through Borodino, where Ney was created " Prince 
of Moscow" for his gallantry, and where, after slaughter of fifty, 
odd thousand men and 30,000 horses, the road was laid open for 
the advancing army to enter Moscow. 

Thank God, Americans do not have to immolate themselves for 
the glory of kings. Our rulers may often be foolish, and perhaps 
sometimes untrue to their trusts, and many laws may be unwise, 
but we do not have to appeal to the cannon to repeal the laws, or 
to bombs to unseat the rulers. We have the freeman's weapon to 
right all evils — an untrammelled ballot. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

MOSCOW— THE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH— DEVOTION OF THE PEO- 
PLE—RUSSIAN TEA— RESTAURANTS— THE KREMLIN- 
BELLS— PALACES. 

Moscow, June 12, 1888. 

I INTENDED to stick as long as possible to old style of dates 
because it was so agreeable to feel that I was still in the spring- 
time of my life, and had not yet entered the summer of ripe age. 
You see, however, that I have already jumped into June. This is 
from sheer indignation and disgust. A long while ago, when 
Peter the Great was making boots and hewing ship timbers — it 
is, by the way, to be hoped he wielded the adze better than he 
did the awl, for the boots shown in the treasury made by his 
hands for himself, are rough specimens of the cobbler's art, — at 
that day there lived in Russia an astronomer under him named 
Bruce, who made weather calculations for centuries to come. 
These prophecies are still noted down in the almanacs. He fore- 
told that May of this year (1888) would be very cold. He was 
right, I am writing in my overcoat, and have not been able to 
go without one since we have been here. Bruce was so wise that 
Peter got alarmed, thinking him a Sorcerer, and ordered him to 
depart the country. Being asked whither, the autocrat said any- 
where, so he got away ; but moved by curiosity, ordered men to 
watch the twelve roads leaving the city. Imagine the feelings of 
superstitious Peter when the reports came in that Bruce was seen 
at the self-same hour some versts from the city fleeing on each of 
the twelve different roads! It is a pity the sorcerer had not been 
knocked on the head before he fixed May, 1888, as a very cold 
month, or that Peter had changed the style, for then this would 
be June 1 2th, with warm, genial weather. 

The hotel we are in, the Slavianski Bazaar, recalls another 
legend of superstition no the part of the people of olden days. In 
1553 the first printing-oflfice in Russia was built, and yet stands 
in a rear court of this house. The original starter of the thing 
was a victim of his knowledge, for he was threatened with death 
as a necromancer, and probably was maltreated by the mob. The 
business, however, got into the hands of the government, and has 
been run by it ever since. The little old house, yet preserved 
with great care, became the nucleus of a large establishment un- 

382 



THE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH. 383 

der the control of the church, which prints all of the books, 
musical as well as others, for not only the Russian establishment, 
but for the Greek church in other countries. It is under the con- 
trol of able directors, who employ learned men, and thus give its 
books authority with all followers of the Eastern Church. It is 
very rich ; owns this big hotel, and much other valuable property. 
The managers wished to have here not only a hotel, but a concert- 
hall, theatre, and mercantile bazaar, all under one roof. The 
bazaar did not succeed. It is now a beautiful hall, large and finely 
vaulted, and is the restaurant or dining-room of the hotel. 

The manager of the printing-house yesterday kindly explained 
to us many things in connection with the Greek or Russian 
church not before understood by us, and showed us some very 
rare old works, and exquisitely illumined music-books — which, 
however, being in Hebrew, Greek, or Russian, I could only ad- 
mire from the outside. The Greek church here acknowledges no 
head other than the conclave or synod of the archbishops, who are 
held to be the successors of the twelve apostles, and all being co- 
equal one with another. The emperor is simply the political head 
of the Russian church. The archbishops, bishops, and the people 
elect the archbishops when a vacancy occurs ; the elected's name 
is then presented to the emperor for his consent, which, when 
once given, removes all right of further control from the czar. 

The emperor is very earnest in his observance of, the rites of 
the church, and in religious matters pays great respect to the 
prejudices and religious opinions of the people. At one of the 
gates of the " Kitai-gorod," or citadel, is a little chapel or shrine 
dedicated to the " Iberian mother of God," in which the image of 
the Virgin is beautifully jewelled, and brings about many miracles. 
Here the emperor dismounts when he visits Moscow, and worships 
in the presence of the image before entering the Kremlin. From 
morning till night there is a stream of people going into and 
coming from the chapel, and toward evening this becomes a 
column. People of all ages and all degrees, the wealthy and the 
beggar, each buys one or more candles from the man selling them 
just within the door, and places them lighted near the altar. The 
revenues thus obtained are said to be very large. No one passes 
under the gate without lifting his hat and crossing himself at least 
three times. The gate is a great thoroughfare, and the lifting of 
hats by gentlemen and laborers, teamsters and drivers, people in 
carriages, and people afoot, all crossing themselves so earnestly, 
and many dropping on their knees, presents a curious spectacle. 

One day we saw two drunken men, with locked arms, stagger- 
ing along the broad square, nearly 100 yards from the chapel. 
When in front of it, down they went to their knees. When they 
attempted to rise, one could not succeed until helped up by a 
passer-by. The shrines and images along the streets are innum- 
erable. Many kneel before them, and the great majority cross 



384 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

themselves. We took a long ride on the top of a street-car. The 
passengers on this deck sit with their backs to each other on a 
long seat running from front to rear. By my side were two roughly- 
dressed laborers. They removed their hats and crossed them- 
selves whenever passing the churches and shrines. We must have 
passed, in the ride, over 20 on the side we were facing. Some 
merchants were on the other side ; they did the same when op- 
posite a holy place on their side of the street. I have followed 
people to see if they would not pass some shrine unnoticed. A 
very few do, but poor women seem never to omit the ceremony. 
At a church service the crossing and genuflections are as numer- 
ous and as continually kept up as are the bowings and prostrations 
at a Constantinople mosque of dancing dervishes. Here, too, 
many of the worshippers when kneeling bend the forehead down 
to the floor. 

Each church we have visited has one or more special " Ikons " 
(holy images). People are always seen before them, and all kiss 
the image before leaving. I asked our guide how often he 
thought these people crossed themselves each day. He replied 
that he did not doubt some who are much on the street do so 
more than 100 times each day of the year. People hurry past a 
church on a railroad train, and lift their hats and cross themselves. 
I think, from what I saw, that this is only done when an image is 
in view. But these are on the front of most churches. So far I 
have not seen a single sculptured effigy of Christ nailed to the 
cross. It is evident that the Greek church uses principally the 
painted images, in preference to the carved ones. I was told that 
this is considered the proper thing, in contradistinction to the 
carved effigies of the Latin church. It is said that the opposition 
to the church of Rome here is greater than that felt for the 
Protestants. I have never seen in any country among the masses 
greater evidences of religious devotion, at least in its outward 
forms, than are shown in Moscow. The Mohammedan of Cairo 
is not more so. This is considered one of the holy cities of the 
Russo-Greek church, Kieff alone ranking as high. Here every ap- 
peal possible is made to the religious heart. There are 360 
churches, many old, and possessing the most sacred relics — one of 
the nails which fastened Christ to the cross, locks of his hair, a 
part of the true cross, bodies of saints incased in gilded shrines, 
pictures of the Saviour and of the Virgin, covered with gold and 
decked with jewels. Avoiding as they do carved images, the 
pictures which adorn the walls are very often covered over with 
garments of gilded silver, the garments taking the form of the 
body in raised relief, and showing the face of the painted picture 
with here a hand and perhaps there a foot. The interior walls of 
many of the churches are almost covered with pictures of life-size. 
These being clad in garments of gold in high relief make the walls 
look as if built of gold, and give the interiors of such churches a 
massive richness vieing with any thing seen in Oriental lands. 



THE DEVOTION OF THE PEOPLE. 385 

" Mothers of God," painted in no mean manner, are on the 
front of nearly all churches, and little chapels and shrines, with 
the Virgin and Child, are on the sides of the streets in vast num- 
bers. The Child is rarely represented as a baby, but is usually 
apparently from 6 to 12 years old, and with the thoughtful ex- 
pression of even a greater age, and yet it sits in its mother's lap. 
Lamps are suspended before all of these images, and are lighted 
long before dark. These things all appeal to the ignorant and to 
the devotional, and keeps constantly alive a feeling of religious 
fervor. All churches have domes : the better ones five — one large 
and four smaller ones about it. Many of these are gilded, and 
glisten under the rays of the sun. Rising high over every dome 
is a beautiful Greek cross with crescent below — appealing not 
only to religion through the symbol of Christ's sufferings, but 
also through the debased crescent to the national hatred of the 
Turk and of Islamism. I am told, however, this was not the in- 
tention, but simply to represent the idea of the growth of the 
doctrine of the cross. But some at least of the common people 
understand it as showing the domination of the Christian cross 
over the crescent of Islam. 

Many believe that the Russian aims at a spread of his govern- 
ment over the continent. If he can keep alive in his soldiers a 
desire to make his religion universal he will succeed in making 
himself almost invincible. It was the crescent at the head of his 
columns which enabled Timour to win his enormous victories. 
Men can conquer or die when taught that death in battle opens 
the gates of Paradise. The Czar of Russia has erected the cross. 
Who knows how far it may lead him ? On one of the boulevards 
of Moscow a large pyramidal monument was lately erected ; on 
its four sides, in bold alto relievo, are life-sized representations in 
bronze of episodes of the late war with Turkey. One represents 
a Bulgarian mother and child being cut down by a Turk ; the 
next shows a Russian soldier slaying the Mohammedan and sav- 
ing the woman. Then follows one with a priest pointing the 
wounded soldier to a higher land. Such things must feed in the 
hearts of the people a desire to drive Islamism from Stamboul. 
The rushing floods of this great land flow not more eagerly 
toward the Black Sea than do the yearnings of the Russian toward 
the Bosphorus. 

Many of the churches here are fine, some very interesting, and 
one is simply magnificent. This is the Temple of the Saviour, 
the metropolitan church of the Moscow archbishopric. It is 
large, holds 7,000 people, and cost $10,000,000. It is built in the 
form of an equal-armed Greek cross, of whitish stone, on a base 
of dark granite highly polished. The outer walls have, in high 
relief, in heroic size, representations of Biblical stories, and above 
is a centra] grand dome, with four others, over the arms of the 
cross. These domes are of brilliantly-gilded copper. The grand 



386 A RACE WITH THE SUAT. 

portico, with its 36 columns, is very imposing. The interior walls 
have bases of a curious black marble, with glistening veins and 
wonderfully polished, from Finland ; above this base are the 
usual rows of pictures in gold garments, raised in relief, and above 
them, in rows one over the other, are life-sized pictures of Bibli- 
cal and other saints, finely executed, covering the walls up to the 
lofty galleries, which run entirely around the edifice. These gal- 
leries have many pictures of great size and in high art, depicting 
stories in the lives of Russian saints. The architecture through- 
out is very fine, and the paintings are all beautiful, and, to me, 
seem masterly works. One thing, and only one, helps to mar the 
whole. In the vault of the majestic dome, which is 90 feet in 
diameter, is a picture of God with the child Christ on his lap, and 
the Holy Ghost as a dove on his breast. This picture is a grand 
one ; but it always shocks me to see an attempt to represent the 
mighty, unknown, and unknowable God as a man — as a figured 
being. Human ken cannot fathom the dimensions of Him who 
holds countless worlds in the hollow of His hand ; human thought 
cannot conceive the form of Him who created and set in motion ■ 
ten thousand thousand suns, on whose rounded sides this world 
of ours in flames would scarcely be a flashing spark ; set them in 
motion so true and perfect that no mathematical science can cal- 
culate the far-off aeon when the first vibration will occur in their 
onward roll ! Human imagination cannot even dream of the 
brightness of His eye, which can look into a blazing sun and 
cause the burning flame to dim into darkness. Ah, no ! God is 
unknown and unknowable — never conceived and inconceivable. 
No created thing can imagine what and how He is, whose thought 
created the vastness of space, and who, by His will, filled it with 
the boundless universe ! Next to St. Sophia, and, perhaps, St. 
Paul, I remember no church which has so impressed me as this 
Temple of the Saviour. Standing within it and looking up into 
its dome, over 300 feet high, I was warmed as I could be in no 
Gothic church, though its columns and pillars were as the trees 
of the forest. I do not like the profusion of gilt in the Greek 
church, but, in the form adopted, it has been more successful 
than the church of the West. 

About an hour's drive from the city is the only considerable 
elevation in its neighborhood — Sparrow Hill, on the banks of the 
river. It is only 200 or 300 feet high, but affords a very fine 
view of the town and its domes, the Kremlin and its crenulated 
walls and palaces. It was from this spot that the victorious 
Napoleon looked for the first time upon the doomed city he had 
so long yearned to enter, and which proved his ruin. The French 
soldiers, as they climbed from behind up to the top of this hill, 
are said, one after another, to have shouted " Moscow ! " Poor 
fellows ! Little dreamed they of the burning hand which was to 
grasp theirs in welcome, or of the cold winding sheet which was 



PICTURESQUE MOSCOW. 387 

so soon to enfold so many of their comrades. A map of this city 
looks so like that of Vienna that I mistook it the first time I saw 
one in a window. The river runs through it much as the canal 
does in the other, and the streets of the town, accommodating 
themselves to the form of the Kremlin and the Katai-Gorod, both 
walled in, assume a somewhat circling form, as does the Ring 
Strasse. There are very few streets which are straight for any 
considerable distance. There is probably no city in Christendom 
laid out with more absolute irregularity than Moscow. Looking 
at the map one could believe this irregularity was studied. 
Streets bend and wind in every direction, with no apparent pur- 
pose, except that the inhabitants of the central old walled town 
should reach the country in every direction. Streets lead from 
the Kremlin, or centre, for this purpose to the outskirts in all 
quarters, but with no attempt to preserve direct lines. They 
bend and wind and run sometimes into each other, and are of no 
fixed width. Here they are narrow, then they double their width, 
now they are lost in open spaces of irregular forms into which 
two or more streets may debouch. Cutting these country-seek- 
ing roads is a system of streets attempting to preserve to some 
extent the form of the Kremlin and Katai-Gorod, or central-walled 
ancient city, and seeking to make themselves a system somewhat 
circular and concentric. One of these is the grand boulevard 
occupying the location of an old fortification. This is of various 
widths — now 100 feet, and then spreading to two, three, or even 
more hundred, and encloses a somewhat circular space, not quite 
three miles in diameter. In the centre of this space, averaging a 
tract equal to a mile square, is the irregularly-formed walled old 
town, comprising the Kremlin and Katai-Gorod. Just outside of 
their walls is another boulevard system, occupying the once old 
moat. Between these two boulevards is a faint attempt to pre- 
serve a somewhat circular concentric system of streets. Outside 
the outer boulevard there seems to be no sort of system. The 
boulevards are well planted with trees, and have well-kept promen- 
ades in the centre, the driveway being on the outer sides. 

It will thus be seen that Moscow possesses much to make it 
pretty. The old Kremlin, famous in history during several 
centuries, with its crenulated walls, its palaces, and quaint 
churches, all perched upon an elevation sufficient to make them 
land-marks ; the Katai-Gorod, or walled citadel, with bending, tor- 
tuous streets, and old and yet handsome houses ; the queerly 
laid-out, irregular city outside, with gardens and well-planted 
boulevards — these things give much that is necessary for the 
picturesque. Yet I am compelled to admit that a week's stay 
here did not, to me, make it interesting. The Kremlin and its 
contents, and some of the churches are interesting, but they are 
rather lions in the city. The city itself lacks something to warm 
up the traveller. Perhaps this has been only for us, and may 



388 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

be somewhat owing to the continued cold, drizzly, damp weather. 
This may have kept the people more within ; at least, when on 
the streets, within themselves. They all have such an air of 
apathy, or of selfish indifference ; each seems listless, or if in 
earnest then bent on something belonging only to himself. 

People are crowding the narrow sidewalks, forcing one to get 
on the roadway, and then to dodge off to keep from being run 
over by the drojkies, which rattle, as fast as a trot will carry 
them, over the cobble-paved streets. Porters are hurrying along ; 
women in queer peasant garbs, with bundles over their backs, 
and basket-sandals on their feet, are trudging on their pilgrimage 
from church to church, crossing themselves and kneeling at every 
little chapel, and before every image. They look tired and 
weary, for they are perhaps from very distant provinces, and are 
making a pilgrimage which will take in Kiev — 700 or 800 miles 
away. There are men in rough coats dozing in doorways, and 
drojky drivers, with flowing skirts reaching to their ankles, 
asleep in the vehicles, or importuning you to ride. There is all 
of this, yet there is nothing which I can call street life, which 
makes other cities of fewer people interesting. 

The crowds are on the street, but every one is wrapped up in 
a sort of self-hiding reserve. I love to watch new people. I 
visit cities more to look at and into their people than at and into 
their edifices and shows. I never wearied when walking the 
streets of London, or Paris, or Berlin, or Vienna, and above 
all, of the far-off cities of the Orient. But here there seems to 
be nothing offered by the people to make them attractive. The 
better classes are polite and courteous. The masses, however, 
are not looking about as if ready to be amused. They have 
something to do, and nothing else enters their brain. These 
are the impressions I received. I have gone into restaurants at 
the two o'clock hour of the principal meal. Here the same air 
is worn. A well-patronized caf^ or restaurant in most cities pre- 
sents an epitome of life, and one can spend hours in them simply 
as a looker-on. Yesterday, next to our table, three young men 
sat down, having first looked over the counter on which comestibles 
are spread. A small bottle with a sort of schnapps — and wine- 
glasses, a plate of dark bread, and another of radishes and but- 
ter, with a small dish of smoking-hot veal, were placed before 
them. They ate some radishes and a mouthful of veal, then 
filling their glasses tipped them and, opening their mouths wide, 
emptied the white liquor down their throats at a gulp. They 
then talked and eat more radishes, and a few more mouthfuls of 
veal, and then poured down each another glassful, throwing their 
heads back as if to enable the stuff to reach the right place at 
once. They then lit cigarettes. By this time they had become 
voluble, and after the third glass, which emptied the bottle, they 
commenced to talk German as if to prevent others from under- 



RESTAURANTS. RUSSIAN TEA. 389 

standing them. A second bottle was brought, and a bowl of 
soup, and another dish or two of meat. They took a few mouth- 
fuls, and dropped another glassful of vodky or schnapps down 
into their waistbands. The topic of conversation became very 
sad, for one of them shed tears, which poured down his cheek, 
the other two giving him warm sympathy. They were all young. 
Perhaps it was a tale of blighted love. We left them before the 
second bottle was emptied, and before they had eaten much of 
their dinner. Their conversation had become low-toned and sad. 
The cuisine in our hotel, and in good restaurants, is very fine, 
and comfortably good in the cheaper houses we have tried. 
Nowhere is living dear. Tea, most delicious, with nice bread 
and enough for two, cost 80 kopecks, and a trink-gelt to the 
waiter of say ten — in all about 40 cents. Chocolate, two tumblers 
full, and bread or cake for two, same price. A good dinner of 
soup, two kinds of meat and vegetables, with a compote and 
glass of beer, costs in the best places, for two, about $1.10 
of our money. This same at a cheap, respectable place, but not 
so well prepared, yet good enough, about 35 cents a person, of 
our money. We make it a rule to try all kinds of places where 
food is clean and respectable. Russian tea is very fine. It is 
served thus: A tea-pot large enough to hold one large cup full, 
is placed before two persons, with another large pot of boiling 
water. We half fill our cups from the tea-pot, and fill up with 
water, and if desired with cream or with milk, at the same time 
filling the tea-pot with hot water. In this way we can have as 
much as we can possibly desire. I noticed Russians drinking 
and refilling until the decoction coming from the pot was barely 
coldred. We, however, refill only once, getting thus two large 
cups of delicious tea. The third cup is strong enough for table 
use. For each portion 12 lumps of sugar are furnished, and 
bread enough for a fair breakfast. I noticed Russians putting 
the sugar in their mouths and supping the tea through it, or eat- 
ing it after swallowing some tea. This, however, was when tea is 
taken simply as a beverage, and with a slice of lemon. One 
disgusting habit is common here in the better class of restaurants. 
A glass of water is served after the meal with a finger-bowl. The 
mouth is washed and the water poured out of it into the finger- 
bowl. I have heretofore seen this done at many tables d'hote on 
the continent, but here, so far, it seems universal. There is 
nothing in this really filthy, but it is suggestive of nastiness. I 
have seen it among travelled swells in America. It is a habit I 
hope will not take deep root even in our swelldom. To wash 
the mouth before smoking is a luxury. But there are some 
things that are better done behind a screen than in full view. I 
have not yet seen a single cigar smoked except my own. All 
smoke cigarettes. The result is, I am forced, when talking to 
any one to avoid his breath as much as possible. The smoke 



390 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

from the cigarette is inhaled, and makes the lungs fetid and must 
injure health. May not this, to some extent, increase the dread 
disease, consumption, which I am told is rather common in this 
land ? At the hotel, meals are served in the rooms, with no addi- 
tion to the cost, and judging from the tea-trays being carried 
along the corridors, I would think that nearly all of its large 
population take their morning meals and late suppers in their 
private rooms. Indeed, the manager to whom I complained that 
I could not find any thing ready in the restaurant until nearly 
nine, informed me that he would rather I took the early meal in 
my room, and that it could be had as early as seven. The people 
here are very late risers. Twilight lasts in summer very late, and 
in winter the day is so short that one has to live much in the 
dark. The people retire very late, and shops are all closed till 
after nine in the morning. 

To nibble at something seems to be a human characteristic, 
and every country has its particular nibble. In America the boys 
eat peanuts and the girls chew gum ; in Japan they eat a small 
seed ; in China and India they chew sugar-cane ; in Siam, Burmah, 
and southern India and Ceylon, betel nuts ; in Egypt and 
Turkey, pumpkin seeds ; in Greece, watermelon seed ; here they 
crack sunflower seed. In the street cars, at the gardens, and 
along the streets people are seen eating this seed, and at every 
corner, women or boys are selling them. Every one has read of 
the Kremlin of Moscow, and every one desires to see it or know 
of it. It is a nearly triangular old fortress on the river which 
runs through Moscow in the shape of the letter S. The base of 
the Kremlin triangle rests on the lower curve of the letter, where 
the site of the fortress lifts some 50 or more feet. The whole 
length of the wall is over a mile and a third, through which one 
may enter by five gates, some of which are of historic interest, 
and two are very sacred passages. Over the Gate of the Re- 
deemer is a picture, " Christ the Redeemer," highly venerated, 
and believed to possess miraculous powers. It is a thoroughfare, 
but no one ever passes through it covered. In olden days, any one 
omitting to remove his hat was punished by being forced to make 
a large number of prostrations. Now all do it, either from venera- 
tion or out of respect to the prejudices of the people. This form 
is observed by the highest and the lowest, the native and the 
foreigner. The Gate of St. Nicholas is nearly as venerable. 
Here in ancient times oaths were administered to such as the ab- 
solute truth was demanded from, and litigants in court were 
expected to swear to their cases in the presence of the mosaic 
picture of the saint which hangs over the arch. This holy image 
has witnessed many a battle and helped to withstand more than 
one siege. Napoleon is said to have ordered the to»wer over it to 
be blown up. The massive masonry split from the top down 
toward the earth, but the rent stopped at the frame of the pic- 



GREAT BELLS. 391 

ture. The glass covering it, and the lamp which illuminated it, 
and the picture were unscathed. Such is the statement of an in- 
scription placed over the gate by Alexander I. Through another 
gate the victorious French entered this fortress — the goal so 
eagerly sought through so many weary leagues of march, and 
over so many bloody battlefields. Within the Kremlin walls are 
the real historic spots of this old capital. 

Here is the odd old tower of Ivan the Great, claimed by the Rus- 
sians to have been founded by that old ruler six and a half centu- 
ries ago. From its gallery, reached by a climb of 450 steps, a 
splendid view of the city is had. It lies mapped around, with 
its houses and palaces in confused piles, its boulevards and parks 
green with trees, its green painted roofs giving, with the trees, a 
garden-like appearance to the whole city. Four fifths, perhaps 
seven eighths, of all roofs are green, the few patches of red roof- 
ing heightening the effects of its complemental color. Bend- 
ing like a great serpent the little river winds into the town, and 
by a couple of graceful curves lies for a moment at one's feet, and 
then glides off by another easy curve and seeks the outward plain. 
Here, close to one, hang 30 odd beautiful bells, two of them be- 
ing of solid silver. One of these bears upon its rim the tell-tale 
inscription that it is 338 years old. Woe to the tympanum of 
one's ears if he happens to be in the gallery at the hour when 
the great bell of the Assumption clangs. For its mighty tongue 
is larger than a man, and its weight is 64 tons. If, however, the 
hearer be a few hundred yards removed, this old bell peals a tone 
singularly rich and mellow. From the height one can count 360 
churches, many of them with gilded domes, dazzling and bright. 
At the foot of the tower, upon the pedestal of stone, stands the 
" King of Bells." Who of us in early childhood has not heard 
of it ? I remember seeing a picture of it when I was a small 
boy. It was half buried, but the earth was dug away from before 
a break in it, and one or two men were standing in the orifice. 
When I was 1 1 years old the emperor had it lifted and placed 
upon its present pedestal. To do this was no easy task, for the 
■" king " is a monster, over 26 feet high and 68 feet in circumfer- 
ence, or nearly 23 feet in diameter at the rim. It weighs nearly 
200 tons, and the little piece broken out of it leaves an opening 
seven feet high. 

Within the precincts of the Kremlin are the great palace, the 
armory and arsenal, and two or three churches. In the Church 
of the Assumption are vast riches and valuable relics. Here the 
czars of Russia are crowned. It is said the French took from its 
ornaments five tons of silver and five hundred-weight of gold. In 
it is a solid silver chandelier weighing 900 pounds, given by the 
Cossacks after recapturing the precious metal from the destroyed 
French army. This church has six massive pillars supporting 
its five domes, and so large that they resemble those of an 



392 



A RACE WITH THE SUN. 



Egyptian temple more than a modern church. It, however, is 
not so very modern, for it was built some 700 years ago. Here 
the emperor worships, and places upon his own head the crown, 
and receives the sacrament as emperor of all the Russias. 

In front of the arsenal, in long, compact rows, ornamentally 
placed, are 875 bronzed cannon, taken from the French army on 
its fearful retreat. They represent not only the French, but, also, 
Napoleon's subject crowns, for over a fourth are Austrian, a sev- 
enth Prussian, a twelfth Italian, others being Saxon, Bavarian, 
Neapolitan, Dutch, and Spanish. Many of them have Napole- 
on's initial " N." cut into them, and a great many are named. 
The names are sometimes not over dignified. But these hun- 
dreds of cannon were deeply impressive. Monsters brought over 
such vast distances to slay ! I looked into their mouths and 
wondered how many death warrants they had uttered ; how 
many brave men they had torn to pieces ; how many women and 
children they had caused to mourn. And then I thought of the 
men who had been forced to abandon them, of their terrible suf- 
ferings, of their longing looks towards the west when all was lost, 
and how sweet to them was the thought of the balmy air on the 
banks of the Elbe and the Danube, the Moselle, the Rhine, the 
Seine and the Rhone, where their loved ones were. I could 
almost see them, as hungry and footsore they tottered over the 
frozen plain, and at last sank to their knees, and with prayers to 
God and with one more thought of home, yielded themselves to 
their winding sheet of snow. " How long, how long, O Lord, 
wilt thou permit man's inhumanity to man make countless mil- 
lions mourn ! " 

The great palace is not very handsome without, but Avithin 
there is much magnificence. Vast halls of noble proportions, and 
with a richness of decoration almost fabulous. Here Oriental 
exuberance has been married to Western taste ; Asiatic dreams 
of gold blended with the finest touches of European art. From 
floors in many beautiful woods marvellously designed and exqui- 
sitely laid, up along walls rich and apparently cut from massive 
gold, up to the vaulted ceilings, beautifully frescoed — all was rich 
beyond any thing I had conceived, and yet all in beautiful taste. 
Nothing was tawdry ; it was rich. Nothing was simply luxuri- 
ous ; it was artistic. These are the parts of the palace of 
the present line of czars. In another part are those of the 
rulers of long ago, rich but quaint, and lacking so many of 
those things a modern house would consider simple comforts. 
The counterpane, embroidered, by the daughter of a monarch of 
three centuries ago was pretty, but a few roubles would purchase 
a prettier one now, and a couple of roubles would buy a much 
lighter and far warmer coverlet than the old king slept under. 

The treasury is a plain building, but its contents are of fabulous 
value. Case after case containing cart loads of solid silver and 



A TREASURE OF ART AND RICH CURIOSITIES. 393 

gold plate ; platters big enough to hold a half sheep, or upon 
which to spread a bushel of fruit ; great goblets which a Titan 
could scarcely use to drink from, so large are they, and yet rich ; 
case after case of Sevres china, complete sets, the gift of Napoleon 
to Alexander, all painted so beautifully that they are works of 
high art ; great vases from the same works ; dozens of state car- 
riages in which czars and czarinas rode to their coronation, nearly 
as large as Barnums band wagon, all gilded and burnished. They 
were very rich, but of what clumsy workmanship ! A first-class 
wagon maker in America would not let a wagon go out of his 
shop with such rough wood and ironwork as composed some of 
these carriages in which old rulers rode a few centuries ago to 
be anointed in the name of the Lord, as the kings of men. One 
of the grandest of carriages was a present from England's virgin 
queen. The carriage in which that strange compound of human 
vice and human greatness, Catharine II., rode, was there, and by 
it the stuffed skin of the horse she used to ride " straddle " when 
she reviewed her troops. The picture close by of the empress 
dressed as a general officer astride of a fine horse is a fine one. 
Under it is the saddle she rode, and her bridle, studded with 
jewels and pearls of great value, the gift of the Emperor of China 
or Shah of Persia. In one room are crowns and sceptres, a mass 
of jewels and gold, some of the uncut gems as large as pigeon 
eggs. I said to a Russian, also a visitor, that the emperor might 
sell these things and pay the debt of the crown. His reply was, 
the crown would not be worth much to him if he were to attempt 
the thing. The treasury consists of two great suites of rooms, 
one on the first and the other on the second story. It seems a 
little odd that downstairs, in a most prominent place, is a grand 
picture of Napoleon (I think it is by David) and his iron bed ; 
and at the head of the suite on the second floor is a splendid 
statue in marble of the same wonderful man. What a beautiful 
face his was, and yet what a strong one ! 

There are very many interesting portraits in these rooms, all of 
the Russian emperors and all of the Polish kings, and many 
of its nobles. I had hoped that Kosciusko's might possibly be 
among them. Perhaps if they had it they would not hang it 
here. The museum is in another part of the town. It has life- 
size figures in every pose, wearing the costumes of every province 
of this vast land. The picture gallery in the same building has 
some fine works, all arranged according to schools. Some of them 
are of high order. I have written to our minister at St. Peters- 
burg for a permit to go to Samarcand, and that I hoped he would 
get it in four days. He replied that he would get it, but that 
four daySifJs a short time to get any thing from the officials in 
Russia. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

PRINCELY KINDNESS— RICH PRAIRIE LANDS— VERONIJ— NECESSITY 

FOR FOREST PROTECTION— THE COSSACKS— BRAVE CHILDREN 

—SUNFLOWER THE RUSSIAN NIBBLE— ROSTOF ON THE DON. 

Vladikavkas, June 19, 1888. 

Fearing that Mr. Lothrop, our minister, might not get our 
Transcaspian permit in time, I resolved again to avail myself of 
my high position as an " American sovereign." Armed with our 
cedentials we called upon Prince Vladimir Dolgoroukoff, a 
member of the council of the empire and governor-general 
of Moscow, at one o'clock, his hour of reception. We were 
detained in the ante-chamber, with quite a number of other 
visitors, for fully an hour. The prince was evidently having a 
good appetite for his lunch. Finally he appeared in the grand 
inner room, preceded by a few aides, who backed out in front of 
him. A committee of a financial company was shown in first. 
Its chairman bowed up to the prince, kissed him on either cheek, 
and presented him with a copy of some handsomely-bound pro- 
ceedings of the company, which had just celebrated its jubilee. 
Some speeches were made in a low voice, the chairman and com- 
mitteemen frequently bowing. The prince evidently received 
them very graciously. Cards were then presented, ours among 
them, and an aide soon bade us enter. I introduced myself, ask- 
ing if his excellency spoke English. He replied in the negative. 
I then proceeded in the best French I could command. He bade 
us most cordially to be seated, and asked what I wished and what 
he could do for us. To explain this I had to mention our ex- 
tended journeyings, and why I desired to visit Turkestan, to see 
if Russia was carrying there the light of the West. He at once 
got us into conversation, and said that Willie was having a grand 
opportunity in thus voyaging so far under the tutelage of an ex- 
perienced man. I remarked that this was almost the exact ex- 
pression of the King of Siam, when he honored us with an 
audience. His Excellency at once became decidedly interested, 
and kept me telling him of the king and his manners, etc. I then 
showed him my credentials. He said Gen. Annenkoff, the 
builder of the new road to Samarcand, had just arrived on his 
way to render his account to the emperor, and was to be with 
him that afternoon, and that he thought he and the general could 

394 



PRINCEL Y KINDNESS. 395 

arrange for us. He kept us fully 25 minutes, when, remember- 
ing that others were waiting, he bade us good-by, saying he 
would send his secretary to us that evening with such papers as 
he could give us. The secretary came at nine o'clock with the 
information that as the matter was already in the hands of our 
minister, the prince preferred not to intervene, but, advising us to 
proceed to Tiflis, and to write at once to our minister to have the 
permit telegraphed to the governor-general of Transcaucasia. J 
felt dished and so expressed myself, saying that I could not risk 
going so far and then probably finding no means of making the 
trip I so much desired. The aide assured me that the governor- 
general said there was no doubt I would receive the dispatch. I 
sent my thanks to his excellency, etc., etc. The next day, being 
the day we left, on our return to the hotel after a walk, we found 
the prince had honored us by a call in person, but, finding- us out, 
sent us a message that before our train should depart, he would 
send his secretary with some letters which would help us through, 
and urged me to go on to Tiflis. The aide did come, and 
brought a beautifully engrossed letter of introduction to Prince 
Dondoukoff Korsakoff, governor-general of Transcaucasia, intro- 
ducing me and asking such aid as we may need to get through to 
central Asia. In other words American sovereignty is in the 
ascendant — at least for a while. 

We have passed over a magnificent farming country on our way 
here, it being a part of the mighty grain-producing plain of Russia. 
We left Moscow at 1 1 at night, but at 2:30 it was already light; 
from that time until seven in the evening the road ran through a 
country almost a counterpart of our best prairie land, a great 
rolling plain as far as the eye could reach, except when appeared 
intervening copses of young trees or growth along streams and 
little rivulets, the whole covered with rye in head, wheat sprout- 
ing or already up, and, towards Veronij, nearly a foot high; oats 
just planted ; potatoes four or five inches up ; small patches of 
beautiful hemp; here and there plowed land not yet showing any 
green, and with broad pastures interspersed, on which great herds of 
horses and cattle and flocks of sheep were grazing. Rye was at first 
the predominating growth. With its greenish-gray heads waving 
in the gentle breeze, Avith the young wheat gleaming in emerald 
green in the sunshine, the brown plowed fields and other growths 
of slightly varying hues, with copses of wood and long lines of 
trees here and there, with the herds now in hundreds near by and 
then cut against the sky on the ridge of some distant rolling ele- 
vation, the whole presented a charming view to one who delights 
in fields and farming prospects. Near Moscow, and, perhaps, for 
over 100 miles, the rye was light and the soil apparently thin ; 
then the rye became heavy, and the young wheat had large 
healthy heads. Altogether, this prairie surpasses any of ours, 
except, perhaps, a part of Kansas. The soil is deeper, running 



396 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

from two and one half to four feet, and the substratum is better, a 
clay not cold and stiff like that overlying our hard-pan, but inter- 
mixed with sand and red oxides, something like the subsoil of the 
blue-grass regions of Kentucky, whereas the bulk of our prairies 
have an underbed of gravel or sand, or a stiff, worthless clay. 
This land has more recuperative powers than ours. The crops 
are by no means so good as our average, but it is, I suspect, ow- 
ing to bad cultivation. The plowing is very shallow, and there 
seems to be no rotation. Ever since we first entered Poland I 
have noticed that land seems to have but one means of rest, and 
that is by leaving it fallow for a greater or less time. In the 
north two seasons of crops and then one or two of fallow is the 
rule. This fallow land affords pasturage, for vast herds of horses 
and cattle. The herds help greatly to keep up the quality of the 
soil, I also remarked that all manures for loo or 200 miles 
south of Moscow are spread upon the land. Straw is not burned, 
but the animals being so numerous and nearly all under cover at 
night and fed with straw, the crop of manure is large and utilized. 
Thus far these people are good farmers, but they plow so lightly 
that the roots of crops must depend too much upon the mere 
surface, and the weeds all sprout and grow as fast as the grain. 
This makes hand-weeding necessary. Cheap labor makes this 
possible, but deep plowing would save many a backache to the 
poor field-laboring women. I know I am writing with considera- 
ble assurance for one who sees from railroad cars. But I was 
bred a farmer, and have always closely observed its modes. This 
enables me to see and to ask questions of every one who can un- 
derstand me. I will stick to second-class carriages, where I meet 
the people. In every train I find some one who speaks a little 
French or German and acts as interpreter for me when he himself 
cannot give me information. 

Here I must bring in one of my dissertations. I am opposed 
to all sumptuary laws, but am in favor of, and would warmly 
urge, a certain kind of legislation which would interfere somewhat 
with private rights. The land of a country may be in the owner- 
ship of individuals, but its preservation belongs to the State and 
to posterity. A man has, and should have, the right to crop his 
land as he wishes, but he has not the right to destroy it. Mother 
Earth yields of her bounties. Man should return something of 
her rich yields whenever she gives him a superabundance. He 
has no right to destroy the forests, which keep up a healthy rain- 
fall. He should use the wood, but a scientific oversight should 
be exercised by government to determine when such use by the 
individual becomes detrimental to the masses — that mass which, 
aggregated, makes the State. Every State should have forest 
laws, which should watch over a man's woods and restrain him 
from destroying them. Government restrains the hand of the 
man who would commit self-slaughter. An acre of good woods 



STATE INTERFERENCE TO PRESERVE TREES. 397 

is oftentimes worth more to a large district than a lialf-dozen sucli 
men as would be fools enough to cut their own throats. Again, 
we have in our Western States a virgin soil, and the people of the 
older States who have worn out their old lands are filling up the 
new, and are doing their level best to see how quickly they can 
make them unproductive. Every thing which the farmer cannot 
use or sell is burned. Our Western prairies of virgin soil are now 
feeding the world, but it will not be many generations before they 
will be exhausted, as are the lands of the older States. Nothing 
fitted for manure should be burned, unless when it be unavoida- 
ble. If our people have not forethought to keep them from 
destroying the woods and from wasting manure the government 
should take the thing in hand. We pass laws to protect game 
because a few sportsmen have taken the thing in hand, and to 
protect fish, which was also inaugurated by the followers of 
Izaak Walton. Who will take the initiative and preach a crusade 
against the other far more injurious waste? Nearly every European 
country, I believe, has inaugurated forestry laws, and vast benefits 
have accrued therefrom. A political convention that would put in 
a plank of that sort would find it much more easily floated than 
some of their tariff platforms which forces the candidate to play 
the great modern game of " mum " until the election be over. 

Toward seven o'clock we entered and took an hour or two in 
passing through a fine tract of wood — oak, birch, and some pine. 
Birch seems here almost a national tree. I have seen more of it 
since I crossed the Polish frontier than before in my life. Be- 
tween Warsaw and Moscow, and then for some distance on the 
road south, we have passed very many miles through forests 
which looked as if the trees were whitewashed, and vast wood- 
piles — thousands upon thousands of cords — which Willie thought 
had frost on them. 

We passed through many fine towns, and in sight of hundreds 
of peasant villages, looking like collections of old straw-stacks. 
I shall, however, not say any thing of them, or of peasant life 
and outlook until I shall have seen more. Veronij is on the 
Don, 367 miles south of Moscow, is a broad-streeted city of 
50,000 people, spread over a large surface, the bulk of the houses 
being of one story; it has some fine churches. The city is on a 
high bluff, which lies on one side of the river, and affords a 
fine prospect over the vast plain, on the opposite side, with a 
dozen or two large villages in sight, and great farming-lands 
spread out as on a map. The town seems a thriving one, and 
its market-place was an interesting study, filled as it was with 
country people, with their clumsy costumes, of which, too, anon. 

As an illustration of the necessity of forest protection, I will 
state that Peter the Great built at Veronij a large fleet of deep- 
draught ships, with which he suddenly covered the Black Sea, 
and thereby gained vastly over the Turks. The timber and masts 



398 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

for these craft grew in the neighborhood, for forests abounded 
along the river. Growing population soon levelled the forests, 
and the Don, which had floated for i,ooo miles armed ships, 
became so shallow that only light flats can now navigate it. The 
disappearance of trees dissipated the rain-giving clouds to a great 
extent, and now there are often injurious droughts. The steppe 
or prairie south of Veronij is wonderfully rich. A very intelli- 
gent man, educated in German and Swiss agricultural schools, was 
our fellow-passenger for two days, and gave me great assistance 
in studying the country passed. The black-soil Russian steppe 
is of vast extent, stretching from the Hungarian frontier nearly 
to the Ural Mountains, east and west, and from less than loo 
miles south of Moscow to the Black Sea, north and south, with 
occasional breaks into it of sandy lands, and covering an area of 
perhaps 1,000,000 square miles. This is sometimes flat and some- 
what cold ; but is generally more or less rolling, and often has 
high undulations. Some, over which we ran, were as high rolling 
as western Iowa. I saw much land with fully four feet of dark 
soil, and below that a mass of fine reddish clay ; for several hun- 
dred miles scarcely a stone was in sight, even in deep railway 
cuts, and nowhere did I see any shale or shingle underlying the 
soil. Oftentimes as far as we could see there were fields of rye 
swaying and bending in the wind. It for the first half of our 
way, seemed to cover the country, and magnificent rye, too, 
heavy-headed and with tall, fine stalks. As we came south the 
wheat became taller and more abundant, and was, before reaching 
Rostof, in head and a good and the predominant crop. 

South of Rostof, on ourway to Vladikavkas, we passed through 
a great flat plain, all covered with very fine wheat, or with grass 
now being cut and in hay-cocks. The wheat-fields were of vast 
extent, a sea of green, and the hay-lands, though of spontaneously- 
growing grass, were as thickly-covered with cocks as our best 
timothy-meadows. At one time a somewhat distant tract of 
6,000 to 10,000 acres had so many that I thought them thickly- 
strewn bushes until the glass brought the hay-cocks out. Russia, 
generally I am told, follows the three-field system — two years of 
grain, then a fallow. In the south the fallow lies for years, with 
no fixed rule, and produces fine pasturage and splendid hay. 
Sometimes we saw, all along from Veronij to this place, herds of 
cattle of several hundred head. Each village has its individually 
owned cattle grazed in a common herd. The flocks of sheep, 
too, were very large. All railway-stations had sheds filled with 
wheat in bags, and huge bales of wool. The sheep are frequently 
dark and black-spotted or brown, and mostly of the broad-tailed 
variety. This side of Rostof we saw many thousands in droves, 
being driven from the great western plains to be slaughtered near 
the Black Sea. They were in bands of 500 to 1,000 each, an ox-cart 
with a hugh hogshead of water accompanying each band. This 
for the shepherds who were driving. 



THE COSSACKS AND THEIR CHILDREN. 399 

Nothing has so far so surprised me as the Cossacks. I had 
supposed them a half-civilized set of rough people. We have 
constantly had Cossack officers on our trains, polite and nice men, 
and their wives pleasant ladies. From Veronij to Rostof we 
came on a very slow train, taking 36 hours to make about 400 
miles. It made stoppages of from a half-hour upward at several 
stations near which were large villages. In this way I was enabled 
to go out and see how the Don Cossacks were and how they 
lived. Their houses were more comfortable than those before 
seen in Russian villages. Generally there was grass about them 
and little gardens and flowers in pots in the windows of nearly 
half of the houses, and even in the huts of the poorest. I have 
always found I can enter a peasant's cot by talking to and caress- 
ing the children. I tried it here with success. I spoke to fully 20 
squads of children of all ages, from the toddler up to seven or 
eight-year-old ones. For the first time I found children who had 
no sort of fear of foreigners. An unknown language generally 
alarms a peasant child. Here it did not. Whether the child 
was alone or with others, hardly able to walk, or a froUicking girl 
or boy, when I would speak to it and hold out my hand, it invari- 
ably gave me its own with a grin. I thought at first I must be 
mistaken, but I tried the thing at a dozen villages, back some 
distance from the station, where the children could not have been 
familiar with foreigners. In every instance the little ones would 
look me squarely in the face with frank, uncowed eyes, and would 
then scamper off to tell their companion something of the man 
who did not know how to talk. In some instances this little 
attempt of mine would win a rose or other flower from the 
mother, who probably was at work near by. Generally, how- 
ever, most of the cottages were locked up — mother and father 
being far off at hard labor in distant fields, and the youngsters 
left to take care of themselves ; or possibly the children of sev- 
eral families are left in charge of some woman, who, for that day, 
stays at home. In this way at least I accounted for the fact that 
many youngsters were about cottages where the woman I saw 
could not have been the mother of them all. 

I saw people mowing grass at a little after four in the morning. 
I saw people, too, raking up grass as late as 9:30 at evening. I saw 
hundreds trudging along the roads and others on our train going 
to mow in distant districts. I am told they will go several hundred 
miles to work in the mowing season. Fifty or more would be 
seen making hay at one time. In this way each farmer gets 
his grass down at once. Men and women walk 100 miles for the 
privilege of working for 60 to 80 cents a day. And yet there are 
men with us who rave at our government and talk of themselves 
as being wage-slaves! But such will say the purchasing power of 
money in cheap labor countries evens things up. This is a great 
mistake. Articles representing labor are cheap, but these are lux- 
uries. But staple articles of food and material cost not much less 



400 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

in other lands than in our interior States. Our laborers live on 
the fat of the land and wear good clothes. These consume no fat 
and precious little lean, and their clothes are cheap and well 
patched — never wear out. 

After leaving Veronij a half day's distance we saw little or no 
timber, and then came to a country where manure is almost the 
only fuel. It is mixed up with straw and made into cakes as in 
the other Oriental countries we have seen, or, what is more usual 
here, made into large bricks a foot long and four inches wide and 
thick. This fuel was everywhere to be seen. Very often the door- 
yard was fenced jn with this stuff, to be used when needed. I 
spoke of the Russian people eating sunflower seeds. I have tried 
them now, and when baked or roasted they are nearly, if not quite, 
as agreeable as the peanut. The amount thus used here is enor- 
mous. One will sometimes see little patches of street and of 
parks gray with the hulls, and there is rarely a spot about a depot 
or place of resort where the ground is not thickly strewn with 
them. We have seen thousands of acres growing the plant. At 
one place I saw a field of over lOO acres, and a smaller field was 
rarely out of sight. It furnishes a large amount of oil much used, 
especially about their feast days. I have often wondered they 
were not utilized with us, and have myself given them to my 
chickens. Who will start the cracking them into fashion at 
home? They are better than peanuts, in that they are so small 
that they do not fill up, and in that way a little eating keeps one 
a long while in occupation. I will say for the benefit of our 
youngsters, there is an art in eating them ; they are put endwise 
between the front teeth and then cracked ; with the tongue the 
hull is thrown out and the kernel retained, somewhat as seeds are 
eaten by canaries. Roast some sunflower seed, my young reader 
— not till burned, but simply done — then watch a canary eat, and 
thank me for a new experience. I am told they are perfectly 
healthy, and keep lots of people out of mischief. There is nothing 
like a pleasant, easy occupation. Peanuts satiate ; these do not. 

We spent some hours at Novocherkask, the capital of the Don 
Cossacks. It was early in the morning, giving us an opportunity 
of seeing the peasants with their produce in the different markets. 
Little wagons were ranged along the market places, loaded with 
vegetables or with earthen and wooden jars, holding from a quart 
up to several gallons, and filled with sour milk — not skimmed, but 
thick and creamy. It was not the bonny-clabber of our Southern 
States — one of God's best gifts to man — for clabber will not bear 
shaking, the whey at once separates from the curd and spoils it. 
Our Northern people call it spoilt milk, and lose a great luxury. 
The Cossack sour milk is probably turned with rennet, as is the 
" lubbin " of the Turkman in Asia Minor. The buyers taste be- 
fore purchasing. A few old women tasted so often that we con- 
cluded they were getting a cheap breakfast. 



VERY RICH LAND. 401 

In these, as in other Eastern markets, every thing is sold from 
a pin to a harrow ; from a yard of tatting to a bolt of cotton ; from 
a dried minnow to a sturgeon. By the way, the Don is the veri- 
table home of this magnificent and delicious fish. He resembles 
somewhat our sturgeon in appearance, but far surpasses him in 
flavor. It is from the egg of this fish the celebrated caviar is 
made. Great factories are devoted to it in all towns along the 
river. Of a certain small size the sturgeon is a great delicacy, and 
is carried alive in tanks to Moscow and St. Petersburg for the 
tables of the rich. In the dining-hall of the hotel (Slavianski 
Bazaar) at Moscow there is a large tank or fountain of running 
water, in which fish are constantly kept, being renewed from day 
to day. A guest picks out his fish — it is at once scooped up, and 
in a few minutes is a tempting dish on the table. Twenty-five 
thousand tons of fish are taken from the Don annually, and over 
150 tons of caviar are made along its banks. The fishing is ex- 
clusively the property of the Don Cossacks, who, like the Finns, 
are a people to themselves, are quasi free, and have privileges 
other provinces do not possess. The heir apparent to the Russian 
throne is made " Hetman " of the province, and is considered by 
the Cossacks their own. They serve only three years in the army, 
while other Russians serve five. My prejudices against the 
Russians are being rubbed off, for I can call the Cossacks a splen- 
did lot of fellows. 

Rostof is a thriving business city of 70,000 to 80,000 people, 
.situated on a high bluff, has broad streets, and is fairly well built. 
Along the river it shows a busy scene, two or three miles of piers 
lined with warehouses on a narrow strip under the bluff on which 
the city stands, and the water covered with steamers, barges, and 
light craft. The railroad runs along this pier, and vast piles of 
grain in sacks, and wool in bales, and cotton in black woollen bag- 
ging from Transcaucasia, show the amount of commerce done in 
this Russian seaport. Coal, too, is seen in great quantities. Very 
rich coal-fields lie not far up the Don, and I was told a good qual- 
ity of anthracite exists in exhaustless supply. 

From Rostof to Vladikavkas, a distance of 416 miles, is at first 
through an almost flat plain, on which wheat, stretching for miles 
and miles, was superb. I have never seen such fields — so large, 
and at the same time so heavy in head. On the plain, too, is an 
enormous crop of hay. The hay land, I was informed, is let, not 
by the acre, but by the verst. Along this plain are many mounds 
from four to ten or more feet high, said to be the tombs of chief- 
tains of old, who were buried there during inroads of the Tartars 
and others from Asia into Europe. This was their highway after 
they had passed the Caucasian range. Some few miles back from 
this place on the road we lost the bulk of our passengers, who 
alighted for the mineral springs which abound about the neigh- 
borhood, and which the Russian government is endeavoring to 
make the Saratoga of Russia. 



402 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Up to that time we had a gay company, mostly Petersburgers. 
Nearly all spoke either German or French, and many both. All 
were jolly, and the ladies easily becoming acquainted with. In- 
deed, in every instance they made the first advances towards us. 
It had become known we were Americans, and all seemed anxious 
to be of service to us or to make our time pleasant. Some of 
them were students off for their vacation, young men of a very 
high order of intelligence. I find that German is becoming very 
popular, and is studied more than French among the masses. 
The news of the death of the Emperor Frederick, which reached 
us at Rostof, was deeply lamented, and all seemed to fear the 
consequence. Just before reaching the mineral springs Mount 
Elbruz came magnificently in sight. He presents a glorious head, 
lifting above the clouds. He is 18,500 to 18,600 feet high, and is 
one of the monarchs of the world. It is a pleasant thing to look 
upon these mighty snow-clads, a sensation for which one can 
make many miles of hard travel. Few mountains present so 
noble a sight as this sovereign of Europe — for he is more on that 
continent than on Asia, and stands 3,000 feet above Mount Blanc. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

VLADIKAVKAS— GRAND VIEWS OF THE CAUCASUS— A GLORIOUS 
TRIP— FLOWERS— FRUIT— TIFLIS PRETTY AND INTERESTING. 

Georgia Wayside Station in the Caucasus Mountains, 

June 26, 1888. 

Again I write from Asia, and from a locality which in my 
wildest dreams I never thought to visit, in the very heart of the 
Caucasus Mountains, near which we have supposed our race was 
cradled. The roar of a rushing stream, whose fountain-head is 
near by in a glaciered peak, separating Asia from Europe, fills my 
ear. The odor of a lime-tree comes through my window — an odor 
as sweet as in my youth I dreamed was the breath of the Circas- 
sian maiden, whose home was in the deep valleys of these moun- 
tains about me. All around me are lofty heights clothed in won- 
drous green. They encircle a little basin not a half mile long and 
under 400 yards wide, a basin which seems to have been scooped 
deep down among mountains several thousand feet high, and all 
densely covered with trees, and having no apparent outlet in any 
direction. Last night we slept among the clouds. Coming down 
to-day a few miles we found this spot so pretty that we both said 
at once : " Let us rest." 

Just at nightfall yesterday a wild storm caught us upon the 
summit or dividing line between the two continents, 7,977 feet 
above the sea. Hail-stones rattled about us, the lightning flashed, 
and the thunder rolled as if in anger that two Yankees should at- 
tempt to visit this, its lofty home. Below us all was cloud ; about 
us all was cloud — a bright streak, however, seen through a cloud- 
rift illumined old Kazbek's dome, on which Prometheus was bound 
and suffered. A dashing run soon brought us down to the high- 
est station, where we spent our first night in the Caucasus 
Mountains. 

But I must go back to make my start into these mountains 
regularly. I was unprepared for the beauties which are the main 
features of Vladikavkas. It is a town of some thirty odd thousand 
population, including a considerable military force always stationed 
in or about it. It stands on the edge of the plain, extending 
along the banks of the Terek River, here running off to the north. 
This river is a rushing stream, so darkly muddy and thick that it 
looks like liquid muck. So rapidly does it run through the town 
that its roar is constantly heard as if it were a cascade. A broad 

403 



404 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

boulevard, with promenade in the centre, shaded by quadruple 
rows of lime-trees, now deliciously fragrant, runs a mile long 
through the town, near to and parallel with the river. On this at 
evening was a crowd of promenaders, well dressed and gay. The 
uniforms of the officers and the costumes of the Georgians and 
Caucasians, of some bright color, the men with long knives and 
pistols, the gay handkerchiefs over many of the ladies' heads, gave 
the walks a very bright appearance. Stretching behind the town 
is the great upper chain of the Caucasus, which commences on the 
north side of the Black Sea, east of the Azof, and runs 700 miles 
southeasterly into a deep notch it makes in the Caspian. These 
mountains rise very rapidly by a few tall foot-hills on the north or 
European side, and spread far to the south, covering a large 
country lyingbetween the two great inland seas. The real backbone 
of the whole range lifts immediately from the European side. 
Vladikavkas looks at this mighty backbone, and sees it through- 
out a length of 75 miles, for on its northern line the range is al- 
most straight, with no spurs. First there area succession of foot- 
hills in range, beautifully wooded and green, which look as if 
mantles of emerald velvet, soft and smooth, were spread over 
them. These foot-hills have prettily undulating crests, and are 
broken and uneven, but softened and toned down by the small 
trees and bushes which cover them. They stand generally in a 
single row, a sort of ornamental bodyguard in front of the mon- 
archs. Behind these advanced foot-hills are, in mighty column, 
the real guard — tall, rugged rocky mountains — broken, full of 
precipices and deep gorges, and crested with massive, sharp rocks, 
lifting in horns and jagged teeth. These, if they were the main 
range, would be grand mountains. But they are overtopped by 
the great snow-capped peaks which cut the sky over and beyond 
them. In many features these mountains are among the finest 
in the world, and, viewed from the north, present a noble out- 
line. For hundreds of miles they lift up boldly to an average 
height of nearly ii,ooo feet. Elbruz and Kazbek, respectively 
18,500 and 16,500 and odd feet, occupying the centre of the vast 
line — themselves, however, perhaps not far from 120 miles apart. 
Kazbek, until comparatively lately supposed the taller of the 
two, stands behind Vladikavkas, his lofty, steep dome of bur- 
nished silver, flanked by other peaks to the east and west, reminds 
one somewhat of the view had at Interlaken in the Swiss ober- 
land. The different peaks here, however, do not apparently run 
along in snowy heights from Kazbek, but lift at intervals, this ap- 
pearance owing probably to parts of them being hidden by the 
terrible rocky mountains in advance. 

Unfortunately, there is no elevation in the town from which to 
take in this whole view. At the rear door of a large store we 
found a point from which to take in a large and the best part of 
the picture. The proprietor, seeing us there for quite a while, 



A LUNCH IN CAMF WITH RUSSIAN OFFICERS. 405 

brought us chairs, so that at leisure we watched the huge moun- 
tains for much more than an hour as the sun sank to his rest. A 
few fleecy clouds hung around the giddy heights, now veiling 
them, then slowly passing off. Here a cone was lit up and glowed. 
There another in shadow was cold and spectral. Now the snows 
glistened white under the falling rays; then they became pink or 
rose, and iinally of a golden pink or delicate salmon. We looked 
till the horizontal sunbeams painted the whole in mellow golden 
tint. I turned away quickly that I might hold in memory the 
glorious scene. 

We took a long walk in the morning about the town. Standing 
at a corner, doubtful which way to go, an intelligent man in 
fairly good German asked if he could assist us. We got into con- 
versation. Learning whence we came, he asked if the Jews pros- 
pered there. On my telling him of their great thrift and success 
in our town, he sighed and said he often dreamed of America, and 
wondered if he might ever reach it, and inquired as to the probable 
cost of reaching New York. We were in the Jewish quarter, and 
were soon surroundad by quite a number — men, women, and 
children, whose dark eyes and other marked features showed their 
ancestry. They do not anywhere since we left Poland wear the 
marked costume there seen, nor have they that studied, solemn 
look so characteristic of the Polak sons of Israel. In the outskirts 
of the town a Russian of^cer, seeing us again doubtful which way 
to take, pointed to a road running into the country, and evidently 
indicated that we should follow it. A half-mile's walk explained 
his meaning. We came in sight of a military encampment. A 
spot perhaps a quarter of a mile square had been planted in trees 
in regular transverse rows, now old enough to make a nice shade. 
In the squares made by the cross rows, and elevated on tufted 
plats, were pitched the tents of a regiment. Passing in front, we 
were ordered off by a sentinel. We walked down the side, and 
seeing some officers on the porch of one of their quarters — com- 
fortable one-story houses in the rear of the tented camp — I ap- 
proached to apologize for our intrusion. We were invited to be 
seated, and finding two or three who spoke some French were in- 
vited to the mess-tent to take a glass of wine. It was 12 o'clock, 
and their dinner was nearly ready. After a glass of wine taken 
and some jokes with the officers — there were by this time a dozen 
present — we were pressed to remain and eat with them. We did 
so, and had a right jolly good time. They were all young, for it 
was a lieutenant mess, — and I, too, cannot realize, except when 
climbing, that I am not a boy. Joke after joke passed in bad 
French, helped out by worse German, and laughter was the rule. 
We finally parted, and left behind us as nice a set of young fel- 
lows as I have ever met, bright, genial, polite, and finely mannerd 
young men, who again showed us that the Russian bear can have 
very velvety paws. 



4o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Our English guide-book had made us expect the hotels of 
Vladikavkas to be bad, dirty, and buggy, and we intended to 
hurry through. The hotels have improved, or the traveller who 
gave Murray his ideas was over fastidious. We found the Hotel 
de France quite comfortable for two nights, and its director most 
kindly gave us much assistance in getting a carriage and provid- 
ing for post-horses over the mountains to Tiflis. 

We took a " tarantas " — a sort of strong victoria — and engaged 
relays of horses for the whole distance, three to each station, of 
which there are 12, the run varying from 12 to 20 versts. The 
distance to Tiflis is 201 versts, 134 miles. A " telega " or springless 
wagon is generally used by officers, and costs less, and the dili- 
gences, two daily, still less. But we, for the time being, own our 
carriage, and can take as many days for the trip as we may wish. 
Horses are harnessed abreast up to four. On the steep parts of 
the road the diligence uses as many as eight, four at the pole and 
two and two in the lead, the two preceding spans having a pos- 
tilion to each. 

We started from Vladikavkas before the sun had risen. An 
hour's run brought us into the foot-hills along the banks of the 
swift-rushing Terek. Not a single cloud or a cloudlet was to be 
seen. The green hills were deliciously fresh in the cool morning 
air. The rocky monsters behind were sullen, dark, and repellant 
in their rugged grandeur ; their denticulated crests were cut clear 
and exact upon the snowy masses rearing behind, white, cold, 
and as bright as burnished silver. As we rode onward the sun 
dipped into the valleys, warming up and lifting the moisture- 
laden atmosphere, which reaching and touching the snowy 
heights, was caught, and its invisible woof woven by icy fingers 
into filmy clouds. Now a delicate cloud-spray rose and bent like 
a wreath of pale smoke from the loftiest point ; then spray met 
Spray, thickened, and fell like gossamer-mantles over the mon- 
arch's shoulders, while above the snow-crowned brow caught up 
and held the glowing sunbeams. Up the banks of the rushing 
Terek we rode, our driver cracking his whip, and the bells on our 
shaft-horse merrily jingling. On our right and on our left rose 
near by the bush-covered hills, and then came the rocky, inner line 
in massive and mighty precipices, broken and cleft, and revealing 
bits of snow-clads beyond. 

The scenery along the narrow pass was fine from the begin- 
ning, and, growing finer as we proceeded, became terrifically grand, 
at the Dariel Gorge, which gives its name to the entire pass. 
Through a cleft in the mountains, which lift thousands of feet 
above, the rushing stream has cut its way. Roaring in a succes- 
sion of cascades, it whirls below. High above, the mountains 
lift in point upon point — needles and teeth upon needles and 
teeth. We entered a sort of vast pit, cut down in ragged, jag- 
ged masses of solid rock, the broken-pointed and denticulated 





M. 



PORT^ CAUCASIA. GRAND SCENERY. 407 

pinnacles of its rim reaching the bkie sky, thousands of feet 
above us. The cleft through which the river rushes is of solid 
granite, which has here upheaved the mighty backbone of the 
range, carrying the stratified rocks far aloft, bending and pitching 
them into broken curves and vertical sections. These, through 
the wash and melt of countless ages, have been split into pinnacles 
and spires, horns and jagged teeth, rising one above the other, so 
closely pitched as to seem perpendicular when viewed from below. 
Passing through the cleft we were in a mighty rock-pit, the walls 
of which at the lower cleft and at the one above so blending and 
running into each other in their confusion, that there seemed 
absolutely no exit. We seemed caged in a rocky crucible, whose 
upper edges were thousands of feet above us, and up which no 
human foot could climb. A sharp bend, however, brought us 
through another cleft where there was a Russian fortress, and on 
a rock, several hundred feet high, was perched an old ruin built 
1,800 years ago, when Rome was mistress of the world. These 
two clefts, in the granite ribs of the earth, are the celebrated 
" Portse Caucasia," locking the pass between the Roman empire 
and the unconquerable Scythians, whose home was the boundless 
steppes of the north. Not far from this, cut as a- gallery high 
upon the terrific precipice, we saw a narrow road far above us, 
running along the dizzy crag. When and by whom built I know 
not, for there is no mention of it in the guide-book, and no one 
we met could tell any thing of it. Perhaps it was chiselled by 
those hard Roman hands, whose iron grip knew no relenting, 
when a senatus consultum had decreed a nation was to be de- 
stroyed, nor could we see any use for it, unless the pass below, 
was, at the time that this was cut, a lake which has since broken 
through. 

Passing through the Dariel Gorge, and soon ascending by easy 
grade over the fine military road, Kazbek rose close by us, his 
head shaped like a Georgian's cap, or a very steep dome. A 
great glacier descended from his shoulders, now in deep fissures 
clear and greenish under our glasses, then broken over some lofty 
crags, it showed a mighty precipice of riven snow. This glacier 
was not colored and stained by dust and debris, but was white, 
pure and as undefiled as a snowflake just caught in its fall. Here 
we found a well-built station, and close by a village of Circassian 
mountaineers. Seated at a window looking out upon the snowy 
mountain, we had a delicious meal of mountain-trout, and drank 
to the health of old Kazbek in a bottle of Caucasian wine. 
After dinner, finding a bench near the house, I lay down, and 
breathing from a fragrant cigar, gave myself up to one of the 
sweetest of all delights — a communion with undefiled nature. I 
fear I am too much in love with nature and her creation to de- 
scribe her in her various haunts — each one is so beautiful that I 
am apt to think the present one unequalled by any which has 



4o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

gone before. A lot of men and boys gathered about us to sell 
crystals and other specimens. Our opera-glasses made them for- 
get trade. These have been the delight of the ignorant in all 
nations. 

We did not see many flocks on our upward trip, but in the 
narrow valley there were small herds of roach-back hogs — queer, 
plucky little fellows, with prodigious crops of bristles and little 
meat. Now and then a flock of sheep could be seen on a steep 
slope, looking as though they were hanging rather than walking 
upon it. The mountains abound in game — chamois, roebuck, 
and wild boar, bear, stags, and the ibex. We saw a pair of horns 
from the latter, lately killed, which weighed 50 pounds. We met 
many vehicles passing from Tiflis and beyond, where all Russians 
who can, leave for the hot summer months. The stations are 
government houses where change of horses is had, a slight buffet 
is spread, and where a good many people can sleep in a large 
common room by providing their own bedding ; each station has 
also a room or two with comfortable beds. They are run on the 
principle of the East Indian rest-houses. A traveller has a right 
to stop two or three days on payment of a moderate fee for 
lodging, and longer if no other traveller needs his place. We 
spent two nights in them, and not at those recommended, but 
where our convenience demanded, and were very comfortable. 
The guide-book dwells upon the necessity of bug-powder, etc., 
in all of this country. We have not felt a flea or any other 
nocturnal brute. The English are so particular that they keep 
themselves miserable. They are like the avenue lady who insisted 
that the mayor should keep nude boys from bathing off the break- 
water, admitting at the same time that she could see nothing 
shocking except when she used her glasses. 

Where the valley widened out after passing Kazbek station, 
-villages often perched upon the steep slopes, and queer two and 
three story towers, sloping upward like an obelisk, and occasion- 
ally the ruin of a castle of considerable size and of picturesque 
appearance. Some of these towers are seen dizzily roosting 
upon steep and high rocks, where in the days of yore the Geor- 
gian chiefs could swoop down upon caravans passing from Europe 
to Asia, or vice versa. I suspect, however, they were used 
mainly as places of refuge for villagers when attacked by hostile 
clans. The village houses are all little flat huts of stone, laid 
without mortar, and roofed over with flags on which dirt and turf 
is spread. I went into some of them, a few kopecks given to the 
children winning the mother's heart. They were mere man-sta- 
bles. A bench or two and a shelf — dirty and smoky, and stink- 
ing from the smell of the cow-coal which is stacked in and about 
them. They have no chimne5''S, the smoke from the stinking 
fuel blacking the walls. From Dariel Gorge up to and for a sta- 
tion or two beyond the summit, there are no trees, and the other 



OLD TOWERS. FINE ROCKS. 409 

fuel cut into blocks or flattened in cakes is the only one. We 
saw an old man carrying an armful of this, not over-dry, on his 
left arm, while under his right were a couple of loaves of black 
bread. I asked myself the question ; " After all, what is dirt ? 
Is it not simply a sentiment or a conventionalism ? " At the sta- 
tion below the summit a side stream came down from quite a 
valley. In the junction of the two streams, and quite among 
the huts of the small village, is a little graveyard. There was a 
peculiar smell in it. I was unable to decide whether it was from 
a dead man or a dead rat. They to me are nearly the same. 
Being curious, I looked closely, but could not see the rat ; there 
was, however, a little, rough stone-pile over a grave not long 
made, and a rat or a bad-smelling ghost may have been among 
the loose stones. 

Over the same village is an enormous precipice, hundreds of 
feet high, and jutting over. The under half of it is composed of 
basaltic columns, laid flat, the ends forming the wall. It resem- 
bled a vast pile of oddly-hewn timbers, seen at the ends ; over 
some feet of it were the cow-cakes drying — a heroic filth-dryer. 
The whole pass would be a charming place for a geologist to 
study ; the rock formations are so peculiar and of so many vari- 
eties ; great cliffs, a mile long, looking like Titanic heaps of 
chocolate ; trapite cliffs and basaltic colonnades, metamorphic 
rocks in vertical sections, dark and shiny ; granite shoving into, 
and now and then bursting through, the overlying rocks. The 
gradations of heat through which these several rocks passed 
is so distinct and marked that I should think a scientific man 
would find them a valuable book to read. The distance between 
the last northern station and the summit was made over a beau- 
tifully winding road, bending and doubling again and again over 
itself. We were among snowdrifts of last winter, or of late slides, 
and our road at one point was cut through a solid mass of white 
ice 10 to 15 feet deep, and the river, now a little mountain tor- 
rent, often ran through tunnels of its own cutting under acres of 
hard snow which will not melt away yet for a month or more. 
White Alpine roses and a purple flower, shaped like a hj'acinth, 
were spread over the upper somewhat level tracts. Sometimes 
the rose of pale white, lying close to the upland meadows, made 
them look as if covered with myriads of huge snowflakes. The 
short grass wore that strange emerald green, more intense even 
than the emerald itself, which is seen nowhere other than on lofty 
places where the summer's sun carries the snow covering quickly 
away. At a little under 8,000 feet we were on the line dividing 
Europe and Asia. Suddenly the sky just over us darkened, 
lightnings flashed, and thunder rolled, and great hail stones rat- 
tled on our lifted carriage-top and made our horses dash madly 
on and down the steep grade for a short distance, where we halted 
for the night. 



4IO A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Two clean beds and two cups of tea and bread in the morning 
cost us one rouble and 35 kopecks, or say 60 odd cents. It rained 
hard during the night, and a heavy fog enveloped our mountain 
perch when we awoke. It, however, soon lifted, and our early 
ride of ten miles to the next station was deliciously exhilarating. 
We had to go down a narrow, treeless gorge, adown which start- 
ing from the narrow heights above a stream falls with great 
rapidity. The roar of rushing waters came up from far below, 
although the head of the stream was but a little way off above 
us ; but it was snow-fed, and quickly filled. A bee could have 
flown to the point we were to reach by a flight of a mile or less. 
We ran over about eight to reach it, without using a break or 
having our horse once bear upon the breeching. We used but 
one horse on this stage ; his only duty was to guide the shafts. 
Winding about a perfect grade, he trotted rapidly, while we saw 
our road now a quarter of a mile to our right, then 100 or so feet 
below, and then again away off to the left. At one point four 
tracks lay visible below which we were to reach in succession after 
many a beautiful bend. I have been over Swiss and Tyrolean 
carriage-roads, but over none where so rapid a descent was made 
by such easy and regular grade, and displaying so fine engineer- 
ing. We reached the Aragva River, down whose banks we were 
to descend for a long distance. Although separated by only a 
few miles from the northern slope of the great backbone of the 
Caucasus, we were not only on Asiatic soil but also in an Asiatic 
clime. The difference was perceptible to the senses of feeling 
and of sight. Vegetation took a ranker growth, and the little 
mountain crops were far in advance of those at much lower heights 
on the European side ; and the snows were much higher up the 
mountain, and were soon seen only in the loftiest gorges. Many 
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle hung upon the lofty, grassy 
slopes, and wheat was at first green, and in a couple of hours 
knee-high. The green, grassy mountains began to wear a few 
trees, and before we reached this station, at ten o'clock, were cov- 
ered by dense woods almost as luxuriant as one sees in a tropical 
land. The northern side of the mountains was of rocky gran- 
deur, and in the distance of snowy beauty. This is soft, verdant, 
and flowery. The northern side held us in wondering awe ; this 
lulls us into dreamy pleasure. 

After a delightful day and a half at the station mentioned in 
the beginning of this chapter, and where, thus far, it was written, 
we resumed our drive, and at the station below left the river, 
which made a long bend and ran up a beautiful little valley, climb- 
ing the mountains through masses of wild roses — great clumps 
10 to 15 feet high and of equal diameter, almost solidly covered 
with flowers, mostly white, but some of a very pale pink, some of 
them climbing 20 to 30 feet up the trees. The roses peering out 
from among the glossy leaves of the wild pear were very pretty. 



THE SOUTHERN SLOPE OF THE CAUCASUS. 411 

I suspect this is the original home of the pear. The fruit, yet 
green, is small and woody and very astringent. I tried to get our 
postilion, by sign language, to tell us if they were eaten when 
ripe. I understood his signs to be negative. There was also wild 
hollyhock, bush dwarfed, flower large and yellow. Is not this 
its original home ? Along the whole valley are wild plums resem- 
bling small greengages. There are many flowering shrubs, and 
near and about Tiflis pomegranates are blooming in wild, unfre- 
quented spots. The flora of the whole pass is abundant, and 
many of the specimens very fine. 

Our road, after leaving the river, ran over a rounded, moun- 
tainous country, topped by a high-rolling farming land, of good 
soil, red, but mixed with large gravel, making plowing very heavy. 
In spite of this the ground was broken from six to ten inches. 
To do this, eight yoke of oxen and buffalo were hitched to the 
plow, which had a long wooden share fully three feet long, laying 
the glebe so perfectly over that not a spear of grass or weed could 
be seen. The farming on this upland was excellent, and the crops 
of wheat and rye very heavy. In the centre of this upland of a 
few miles' diameter is the old Armenian city, Duchet, six or eight 
centuries old, and once the capital of the Georgian province. 
Whether these Armenians are the farmers or not I could not 
learn ; if so, they are as good farmers as traders. It was not until 
lately they were allowed to acquire real estate. Rapidly, by pur- 
chase or mortgage, they are getting into their hands much of the 
best land in the country. The Georgians save nothing. They 
are vain, and love show and dress, and mortgages are easy things 
to make. After regaining the river, having made some 16 
versts across country, the valley was wider then when we left it, 
and the stream spread in still rapid descent over a broad, shingly 
bottom. Every half mile or so there were little mills along the 
bank, queer structures, about 12 by 15 feet, and not over eight 
feet high, with flat mud roofs. The wheel, not over six or eight 
feet in diameter, turns horizontally, its centre beam being also 
the spindle for the stone. The stone necessarily revolves rather 
slowly. 

Fourteen miles from Tiflis the stream we had been descending 
emptied into the Kur, a bold river which cuts its narrow chan- 
nel through a solid rock, and flows for a long distance in a canyon 
30 to 40 or more feet deep. At the junction was once the capital 
of Georgia — the rich city of Mtskete, now a little village. Tradi- 
tion carries its foundation back to a time not long after the flood, 
and history tells of it in Roman times. We passed over a hand- 
some bridge, built upon the foundations of a structure erected by 
great Pompey, at the feet of whose statue great Ceesar fell ; then 
running under lofty rocks or over a pretty valley, with some 
vineyards of the grape of the Caucasus, we reached Tiflis, the 
capital, where I now write. We have been more than usually 



412 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

fortunate in our trip. We had beautiful weather, except for an 
hour one evening — I am told an unusual thing, for it is rarely 
clear two days at a time in these monntains. We have now been 
here four days, and learned that just behind us was a fearful 
storm, carrying away much of the road. Willie says it is all our 
luck. He is almost justified in the assertion, for, excepting a few 
days in Constantinople, we have not been interrupted by rain 
since we left home. 

We found no Transcaspian permit here, and no message from 
St. Petersburg. The day after our arrival we presented ourselves 
at the palace of Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff, governor-general 
of Caucasia. We were told he could not be seen until the next 
morning. I expressed my regret, and sent up our cards and the 
letter of introduction from the governor-general of Moscow, and 
asked the attendant to deliver them as soon as possible. Before 
we had time to quit the palace he returned and motioned us to 
ascend. We were ushered in without ceremony. There was no 
retinue or aides. The governor was alone, seated at a working- 
table. Rather gruffly he demanded our wishes. I explained. 
He said the whole thing had to come from the war department, 
and that no message had been sent him on the subject. I told 
him in French what our minister had written me at Moscow, and 
that I had again written him to telegraph the permit to his excel- 
lency, and that I could account for the fact of none having 
come only by the departure from St. Petersburg of Mr. Lothrop 
the very day I had written. I told him that we in America saw 
Russia and her advances into Asia to a great extent through 
English mediums; that I had come to the country prejudiced 
against it, and that already much of this prejudice had been re- 
moved. I spoke so rapidly that politeness forced the prince to 
listen. It was well, for his countenance softened, and in pretty 
good English he said, when I showed a disposition to leave : 
" Sit down, please," and then told me that up to lately the 
Transcaspian country had been under his jurisdiction, but was 
now no longer, but he would at once telegraph to the Minister 
of War, Vanovsky, for a permit. He said he would like me to 
go to Samarcand, but feared I would find it excessively hot; that 
he had a sunstroke there years ago, from which he had never 
entirely recovered. He then offered a cigarette, and when we 
again rose to leave he got up, saying he wished to show us some- 
thing. He took us into his cabinet of curiosities, a very large 
and valuable collection^ — arms of many sorts, old vases and an- 
tiquities picked up in the mountains; exquisite rugs, beautifully 
carved furniture, etc., — all of his own gathering during his many 
years in this country — 40 odd, I think — and several while in 
his present position. He told me he was 70. I said he 
certainly had taken good care of himself. He laughed and 
showed me his left hand, all crippled up with a wound, and 



PRINCE DON DO UKOFF-KORSAKOFF. 4 1 3 

pointed to his leg, which had been broken in battle, to a wound 
in his shoulder and another in his side. In fact, the old general 
was a weather-beaten and war-stricken soldier ; had fought in 
many a battle, and assisted in all of the victories won by the 
Russians for many years. He then carried us through all of the 
state-rooms of this splendid palace, which was built by the Grand 
Duke Michael when governor. The prince's particular hobby 
just now is the founding of a historical, military museum of 
the Caucasus country ; its arms through all ages, portraits, when 
possible, of its great men, and all illustrated by very large battle- 
pieces, in one or two of which he himself was a figure. These 
latter are now around the large room in the palace, and were 
really very good. Passing through the splendid rooms and upon 
a balcony to look at the large, handsome garden, I remarked 
he certainly had a splendid palace to live in. He answered with 
a smile and a sigh ; " Yes, to show to travellers," adding that he 
was alone, had lost his wife a year ago. His voice trembled and 
won my sympathy. He kept us an hour, and was very kind, 
several times laying his hand upon my shoulder when he wished 
to direct my attention to some particular thing, and seeing Willie 
examining some books with English titles on the Caucasus, he told 
him to take some of them to the hotel to read .and to bring them 
back himself, thereby inviting him to return. When he gets an 
answer to his telegram he promised to notify me. The weather- 
stained old warrior has helped to rub down some more of my 
anti-Russian prejudice. 

Tiflis is an interesting city, with a population of largely over 
100,000. Twenty-four thousand Georgians, 35,000 to 40,000 
Armenians, 30,000 Russians, and several thousand Germans. 
These latter settled here as refugees from Wurtemburg long ago, 
to avoid religious persecution. They speak Russian and are loyal 
to Russia, but the " colony," as the German quarter is called, 
shows their Teutonic characteristics, namely : neatness, thrift, 
and comfort about their homes. The long main street in their 
colony is lined with shade-trees, mostly lindens, and now deli- 
ciously fragrant ; fine gardens, with a luxuriant growth of fruit- 
trees and vineyards, give their residences a charming, home-like 
aspect. Seeing a nice frau and fraulein promenading in one of 
these grounds, we were sorely tempted to go in and introduce 
ourselves. I understand that while thoroughly true to the gov- 
ernment these deutschen do not love the Russians. The Armen- 
ians are the real business men of the place, and control the bulk 
of its wealth. They care not for nationality, but adhere strictly 
to their religion and to their commercial avocations. They and 
the Russians live and commingle in their residences and society. 
There is little difference between them and their costumes. The 
Georgians are all of the Greek church, and hold many offices, as, 
I believe the Armenians do also. The wealth of the latter gives 



414 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

them great influence in the country. They are beginning to own 
its best farms and populate many of its best towns and villages. 
The Georgians, to a great extent, wear their own picturesque 
costume of conical astrachan caps, long robes gathered at the 
waist by a silver belt, with a double row of cartridges on either 
breast, and long dagger, and sometimes sword, with pistols at 
their belts. The head-dress of a majority of the ladies seen on 
the street is a small, stiff, round cap, somewhat lifting from the 
crown, over which is thrown a large silk or lace handkerchief tied 
under the chin, generally of heavy figured white — sometimes of 
bright color — and under this a rather long lace veil hanging be- 
hind. It is very becoming, having much the same effect upon 
the face as a Spanish mantilla. It is certainly far prettier than 
the bonnet of French fashion worn by others. 

Again I am forced to say that French fashions, while stylish, 
are conventionally pretty, but are generally artistically damnable. 
Of all the villainous tyrannies ever oppressing a cringing world, 
the tyranny of French fashion is the most detestable. Statesmen 
and patriots rail at the tyranny of kings, emperors, and sultans, 
but I honestly believe that the tyranny of Queen Fashion is 
to-day doing more harm in Christendom than all the sultans and 
despots of the East do in their own lands. Its changing whims 
breed extravagance and waste ; it destroys the health of women, 
kills babies, and sends men into the world deformed and but half 
made up. 

One can, in a few hours walk in Tiflis, see as great contrasts in 
nationalities as in any other city we have yet visited. One local- 
ity is modern European, with American open fronts and French 
styles ; another old German ; a third is thoroughly Persian • a 
fourth simply and purely Asiatic. In the latter two one sees 
Tartars, Bulgarians, laboring Georgians, men in high Persian 
caps, and men with sheepskin caps as big as half-bushel baskets. 
In them men sit cross-legged or on their haunches in and before 
their little shops, doing all sorts of mechanical labor, and the 
streets are redolent with that peculiar odor which pervades the 
mighty East. This odor is as peculiar and distinct as the smell 
of a wet dog, and as indescribable. One recognizes it at once, 
but no one can enable another by description to even guess how 
it is, or what it is. 

The city lies on either bank of the Kur River on a narrow, 
sloping valley, with low mountains, barren, treeless, and generally 
brown, but at this season moderately clothed with thin grass, be- 
hind the town on each side. The river runs through it in a narrow 
channel cut deep down into the rock. At one point for half a 
mile or more this rock lifts in a precipice over loo feet high. Back 
of this is the old Asiatic city. On it the rear of houses rise sheer 
with the cliff, some of them of two or three stories. Many of 
them have balconies hanging several feet over the water rushing 



TIFLIS A PRETTY CITY. 415 

far below. From these one sees people emptying rubbish into 
the river, and drawing water with a bucket and long rope. All 
sorts of rubbish and filth are thrown into the river from the 
banks, or from the several bridges which span the narrow stream. 
The water is thickly muddy, and richly yellow in color ; it rushes 
under its steep banks with great speed — boiling, eddying, and 
tumbling — reminding me much of the Frazer in its canyons. So 
even and regular is its surging flow that it wears a rather majestic 
look, though its width is sometimes under 100 feet, and nowhere 
over 300. Mills are strung along under the bank in one quarter of 
the town on a sort of floats or keels. Their large wheels are 
rapidly turned by the natural current. I counted eleven of these, 
one after another, before the stream bent and was hidden from 
view. The city has a good street-railway and a water-supply, 
with a very strong head at the street hydrants. There are fine, 
hot mineral baths close by. I think the name of the town means 
" bath place." But how we do revel in the delicious cherries, — 
great, black, luscious and pulpy fruit, as solid as peach flesh ; 
others are pink, sub-acid and delightful ; still others, equally 
large, are of a slightly yellowish white. There are also good 
apricots and plums. The Germans in the town and in some vil- 
lages, near by are the gardeners. To them, too, is owed largely 
the grape and its product, a really delightful, fruity, rich wine, 
both white and deep red. 

The Georgians claim a very early Christianity, from the time of 
the earliest Christian emperors, when it was a Roman province. 
They are a fine-looking race, very fair, straight, and slender. 
They hate the Armenians, call them thieves, etc. They are them- 
selves very improvident, save nothing, are heavily mortgaged to 
the Armenians, and hate them accordingly. I have seen nothing 
yet to justify the reputation of the women for great beauty. A 
peep in Constantinople under a Turkish yashmak and youthful 
ardor and imagination have contributed more, I suspect, for 
their great reputation than nature has done. A dark eye and 
a white forehead seen from behind a veil enables a fervid imagi- 
nation to fashion a beauty which a fully revealed face would not 
bear out. A French modiste knows this part of man's nature, 
and she does more by permitting a peep or a glimpse to allure us 
susceptible bipeds than Eve ever does in the East by adopting 
nature's simple uncovering. The Russians have struggled hard to 
stop the trade in girls for the Turkish harem, but an intelligent 
Georgian told me it was still carried on to a limited extent, but 
insisted it existed only upon the mountains near the Black Sea, 
and not in his part of the country. But, after all, is the hatred of 
the thing not sickly sentimentality? A handsome girl is sold to 
a Turk — she becomes his wife — and her parents from her price in 
their old age have some comforts. Left here, she and they live 
like pigs in a sty. The girls do not go as unwilling slaves, or. 



4 1 6. A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

at least, not more so than many a beauty at home, who marches 
grandly up the church aisle to the wedding march, smothered in 
orange blossoms and lace, and is given by prudent pater-familias 
to some rich roue or half-made-up Dives. It is not in Georgia and 
Circassia alone that warm young hearts are turned to stone for 
the sweet privilege of treading on soft, Oriental carpets, and sip- 
ping tea in egg-shell china, and eating from silvered plate. Kings 
and emperors would, suppress the selling of slave girls, and yet 
their own wives, daughters, and sisters are a species of princely 
merchandise. Not far from the Baltic there are royal studs 
where princesses are bred and regularly trotted out and right 
royally sold. The thing is called state alliances. Following these 
are those shining examples for common folks to follow, such as 
Milan's platonic flirtations with actresses, crown princesses drink- 
ing many waters while their husbands dissipate in pastures green, 
and imperial morganatic widows the leaders at Nice, etc., etc. 
Bah ! the slave trade in girls has been partially suppressed under 
these grand mountains, but it is still rife in princely palaces in 
Belgravia, and possibly in fashionable American society, and is of 
a beastly character in London purlieus. 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE CASPIAN SEA — BAKU AND ITS MARVELLOUS OIL WELLS — 

PETROLEUM AS A FUEL— BALAKHANA— A BURNING 

SEA— NATURAL GAS. 

Stea?J!ship, Caspian Sea, June ^oth. 

I COMMENCE this on the Caspian. There is a small sea coming 
from the east ; still our ship of only 300 tons, lies directly in the 
trough, and rocks like a cradle. Many of the deck passengers, of 
whom there are about 100 — Persians, Tartars, Georgians, and 
Russians — are paying their awful tribute to old Neptune, and our 
only Oriental first class passenger, a fat, greasy, and in every way 
disgusting looking Persian, is heaving and retching, as if he would 
pull the sole of his foot up through his stomach, just at the 
bottom of the gangway and under the deck cabin in which I, with 
difificulty, write. Willie suggests that we throw the fat Persian 
overboard as the Jonah that causes our ship to roll when there is 
no wind blowing, but it is at once voted that he cannot be of the 
family of the original live bait, and, therefore, would not, as the 
one of old did, appease the god of waves, for no whale could keep 
this greasy old chap down for a half-hour. 

I look out of our windows upon this great inland sea. It is a 
mass of rolling green — not the slightest tinge of blue in its deep 
waters — and I am told that, even where it is 400 fathoms deep, it 
has the same grass-green hue as here. The Russian fathom has 
seven feet. This mighty sea is about 700 miles long and about 
200 in width. It lies in its isolated bed 89 to 90 feet below the 
surface of the Black Sea. Its waters are dense and bitter, but 
have only three per cent, of salt, whereas the Atlantic has about 
five. We took a swim in it at Baku, and found the water very 
soft, perhaps more so than elsewhere, for there millions of gal- 
lons of petroleum washings escape into it daily. It looked clean, 
however, with now and then some rainbow tints thrown off from, 
filmy patches of oil floating upon the surface. A sail is never out 
of sight ; over 5,000 belong to this sea. Most of them are engaged': 
in fishing, for it teems with fish, — some of them of delicious flavor. 
Twenty-two thousand men are employed in the business on this 
sea, exclusive of a still larger number on the Volga, and the catch 
is over 350,000 tons, a large amount being taken for the roe alone, 
for the manufacture of the celebrated caviar. This peculiar Rus- 

417 



4i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

sian food is exported to all parts of the world, but only those who 
visit southern Russia and taste it when fresh can have any idea 
of how delicious it is. 

I look toward the left over wild Daghesten, and towering above 
is the snow-clad range of the Caucasus, great masses of broken 
mountains, some of them glistening with eternal snows, smooth 
and burnished. Among these, more or less near the Caspian, are 
the deep valleys and lofty fastnesses in which Schamyl so long bid 
defiance to the Russian power. Among the historic paintings now 
being executed for Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff for his museum 
is one representing the surrender of this great mountain chief. 
The motive of the picture is peculiar, and, I believe, unique. The 
Russian artist depicts Schamyl in sullen disgust, his face averted, 
and holding a sword as if saying: " Here it is, hacked and worn. 
I have fought you for years, for I hated you, and hate you still, 
but my old weapon is no longer edged and sharp ; take it. I can- 
not hand it to you ! " I mentioned this to the prince. He re- 
plied : " It was historically true." 

We were five days in Tifiis, and were not wearied of it. It is 
really a charming city, has some very pretty gardens, and very 
-fine views, and presents decided and marked types of people. 
In it one can study central Asiatic peoples most advantageously, 
for, while in close juxtaposition, each maintains its tribal charac- 
teristics as thoroughly as if isolated by long distances. In one 
quarter one is in Persia among men of a delicate type, wearing 
rather long hair, soft as silk and black, but dyed with a slightly 
logwood-tint, and covered by tall, straight caps. In another he 
is surrounded by Tartars and Buchanans of strong features, of 
wild Mongol cast, in rough, coarse garments, and wearing huge, 
rounded caps, a foot to a foot and a half in diameter, of heavily- 
woolled sheepskin. In another Armenian thrift and sharpness 
meet the view at every turn. In still others there is the light 
and cheerful Georgian, living in the sunshine of to-day, and care- 
less of what the morrow may bring. Besides these there is the 
clean and home-like German colony, and scattered everywhere 
Russians, who mingle freely with all, and are slowly but surely 
russianizing all. If they be as slow in every thing else, however, 
as they are in their red-tape ofificial actions, their progress will 
•not be rapid. For example, Mr. Lothrop, our Minister at St. 
Petersburg, wrote me on the 8th of June that he had applied for 
a permit for me to go to Samarcand. On the loth he wrote again 
that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had applied to the War De- 
partment, where the matter belonged, and that I would receive 
it in two or three days. The governor-general of Caucasus tele- 
graphed to the War Department for it, saying to me it would 
certainly come in one or two days. I then received a letter from 
our legation, dated the 15th, informing me that the War Depart- 
ment had promised to send it at once. On the 26th, 11 days 



FARTING VISIT TO THE PRINCE. 419 

after the date of that letter, and 18 after the first application, 
nothing coming, I became disgusted and resolved to abandon the 
trip, and drew money to carry us to Nijni Novgorod, by the 
Volga route. 

We then called upon the prince to thank him for his kindness, 
and to pay our parting compliments. The brave old soldier re- 
ceived us most kindly, and seemed chagrined that he had received 
no reply to his telegram. He was alone and entertained us for 
more than an hour on a balcony overlooking the palace garden, 
where tea and wine were served. His manner has the simplicity 
of an old soldier, and his conversation is thoroughly free and 
easy. I was enabled to learn something of Russian ideas and 
management, looking through the eyes of one of the governing 
powers, and not of the governed. For he is the governor of the 
whole of Caucasus, is a member of the Imperial council, and has 
a vice-regal power over the governors of the several Caucasian 
provinces. He is a blunt, plain, and rather outspoken man, in 
his manner very democratic, and, though 70, is active and full of 
life. He gave me his photo, and to Willie the letter of Prince 
Dolgoroukoff introducing us, with some kind words written 
in it by himself. With the hope that we would see Russia as 
thoroughly as possible, through our American eyes, and not 
through those of the English, he wished us all good things, and 
saw us to door of the outer hall. Thus, by the simple claim of 
American sovereignty, we have received most kindly treatment 
from two of the great rulers of this mighty land, and one of 
them, at least, won from us a warm and kindly sympathy, I be- 
lieve not misplaced, though he be one of the lords of the earth. 
Remarking that on our visits the prince was alone, I congratulated 
him upon the apparent happiness of the people I had met in his 
province, but that I feared he himself was somewhat isolated. 
He said yes, that he felt he could not stand it much longer, that 
he had lost his poor wife, and two of his closest friends within 
a year ; that his eldest son was compelled to be with his regi- 
ment, and his other was in the navy. He was thus alone, and 
could hardly stand it. The world thinks that all is bright and 
gorgeous among the great ones of the earth, but there is as 
much sadness and lonely-weariness in the gilded halls of a 
palace as in the humblest cottage ; and, indeed, probably more, 
for the comparison between the days of pampered indulgence 
and luxury, and the moments of solitude and sorrow makes 
the latter more bitter than is the sorrow of the lowly, who are 
educated to endure. 

At midnight we took the train for Baku, the great petroleum 
centre of Russia. At daylight we were in a broad, flat valley, 
lying between the greater and the lesser Caucasus mountains. 
The latter, to our south, lifted, not far off, 12,000 or more feet, 
and was clothed in snow. In the far distance over them 



420 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

were others. I saw sharp, conical, burnished peaks in the far- 
off which I took to be Ararat. His peaks are very precipitous 
and difficult of climbing. I could not help thinking what a hard 
time the mighty line of living things had when marching by 
twos, male and female, from these cold, bleak heights down into 
the plains below after the great flood had subsided ; and what a 
time good old Noah must have had to keep some of his warm- 
blooded pets from freezing on that lofty 16,000 feet high pin- 
nacle. Noah's ark, with its countless denizens, was always to me 
harder to swallow even than Jonah's three-days' sojourn in the 
whale's belly. What a pity our theologians do not boldly preach 
that the Bible is a mighty system of truth, but that its truths 
come to us clothed in Oriental legend and fable — that the truth 
is there, pure and undefiled, as the grain is pure and uncontam- 
inated by the chaff in which it is housed — instead of trying to 
make a reasoning world swallow the chaff for solid kernels. Then 
many a thinking man, who, finding himself choked by the husks 
and hulls, throws out the whole, grain and all, would learn to see 
the grand truths abundant and rich, like the golden wheat in the 
dun and dusty straw. 

For countless ages God's truths were handed down from mouth 
to mouth, and to enable memory more readily to hold them were 
clothed in poetic figures and Oriental hyperbole. The Asiatic 
husbandman holds his trodden harvest aloft, and as it falls the 
clear wind of heaven blows away the chaff, and the grain falls 
below as food for man. So the biblical husbandman should hold 
aloft the mass which has come down through countless ages of tradi- 
tion, and let the pure breath of reason fan away the broken 
chaff, and leave the kernels of God's mighty truths to fall into 
the mouths of hungry and famishing seekers for the veritable and 
the pure. To one who runs with the sun and sees the myriads 
of the vast East bowing down in earnest worship of their mani- 
fold conceptions of the great ruler of the destinies of man, and 
studiously strives to peep through the crevices left by countless 
superstitions, and to brush away the metaphors and figures of 
Oriental poesy, there comes the dazzling brightness of the eter- 
nal — the one unknown and unknowable God, whose revelation 
lives and burns in every man's heart, which can never lead him 
widely astray, if he resolutely does unto others what he v/ould 
they should do unto him. 

The valley of the Kur, below Tiflis, is settled principally by 
Tartars. We saw many of their villages of low huts, and some 
temporary villages of tents, where they live while gathering crops 
distant from their permanent homes. They are a hardy set of 
fellows, are first-class workers, and command one's respect by do- 
ing men's work by men, and not forcing women to do her own 
and her lord's duty to boot. The)' are all Mohammedans, and as 
such the women's faces are concealed, even those of the humblest ; 



TAR TARS. S TA TION RES TA U RANTS. 4 2 1 

but I am told there is a growing relaxation of the rule among 
them when there are Russian neighbors, who become somewhat 
intimate with the men. We saw a number of groups of women 
with their little children squatted not far from the road, with a 
band of cloth drawn across the upper face, and another on the 
lower part, permitting the eyes alone to be seen. The men all 
wear huge sheepskin caps, spreading very wide at the bottom, 
and slightly tapering and rounding off at the top, and nearly as 
large as a half-bushel mea.sure. They wear these winter and sum- 
mer. They cut or shear the head, some, however, retaining, like 
the Persians, a large lock about the ears. The face is full-bearded, 
the beard often dyed to a rich red. The Persians, by the way, as 
far as we have observed, or at least many do, dye the hair to a 
soft reddish-black, and many of them shave the beard, but leave 
a full mustache. The Tartars are not only the farmers of this 
part of the world, but the hard day laborers and railroad workers. 
We are informed they are steady and industrious. At Baku all 
of the drosky drivers, teamsters, and the bulk of the laborers 
generally are of these people. They seem cheerful, manly, good- 
natured, and independent. They look a man fearlessly in the 
face, and are not afraid to maintain their rights against even a 
Russian officer, and would return a blow for a blow with any 
man. 

The mountains, both north and south, as seen from the Kur 
valley, are brown and nearly treeless, and before reaching the 
sea, were as bleak and desolate as those of Egypt. The plain is 
thin in soil, but I am told the wheat produced is of a very fine 
quality. Irrigation is necessary for stead)' crops, for the rain is 
not regular, and near the sea very rare. Much of the valley 
plain is green with wild licorice, thousands of tons being annually 
exported. It is a low-growing, weedy-looking shrub. This, too, 
seems the original home of the asparagus, much of it, with its 
spreading top of red berries, being seen indigenous along the 
road. Along the banks of the Kur, where we crossed it, are 
thickets of pomegranates, 15 feet high, bright with orange- 
red flowers ; and the thick wood, covering the margin for a few 
rods along the now overflowing stream, was vocal with glorious 
feathered songsters, mostly an almost black thrush. 

Even far off here, where we at home suppose every thing half 
savage, nice lunches and delicious tea are to be had at many of 
the railroad stations. Our railroad managers could gain much by 
studying more the comfort of their passengers, and taking lessons 
from Russia to bring it about. A Russian station buffet or 
dining-room is an inviting and appetizing place — a long counter, 
with cool-looking-glass, tumblers, and decanters, polished and 
bright ; a great glistening urn of boiling water, and the daintiest 
of teapots, all ready for a cup of fresh tea ; a long carving table, 
with huge platters warmed by gas or oil burning below, and with 



422 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a whole roasted pig, a mutton roast, and sirloin of beef, cutlets 
breaded clean and brown, chickens old and young — not swim- 
ming in nasty lard gravy, but with a sauce as tempting as one 
could wish. You select your dishes, and sit down to a table cov- 
ered with a cloth as white as snow, a napkin fresh and clean, 
which one does not have to wear out scrubbing fly-specked plates ; 
good beer and wine, and all at fixed and very reasonable prices, 
and these, too, at small village stations. 

Before reaching Baku, the broken low mountains by the sea 
were absolutely devoid of every vestige of growth ; and I had 
pointed out to me what appeared to be a tall sand-hill dotted over 
with cones from 4 or 5 up to 20 feet high. These are little vol- 
canoes thrown up by escapes of gas form the mighty gasometer 
underlying the whole country. These things, however, did not 
win from us the attention which we gave when looking out upon 
the great sea, that far-off, mighty sea of Central Asia. When 
this race of ours with the sun shall have ended, I fear I shall have 
lost one of my sources of previous enjoyment. There will be 
but few spots where a visit can be possible which I can look for- 
ward to seeing with enthusiasm. There is an exquisite pleasure 
in the first view of something much dreamed of but scarcely 
hoped for. The Caspian Sea was one of those at the extremity 
of xny tiltima thiile. The sight of its calm, green waters was ex- 
hilarating to the heart as the cool, fresh sea breeze was invigorat- 
ing to the cheek. Immediately about Baku the hills were some- 
what cultivated. There could be seen several large Tartar villages 
and large flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle were browsing on the 
fields of lately-harvested, scanty grain. Good rains would make 
the land productive, but there are no streams or hills to make 
irrigation possible. Wells are scattered here and there — wells 
into which one descends by long flights of steps to meagre pools 
20 to 50 feet below the surface ; pools into which the water seems 
to ooze, rather than flow, and so shallow that one can scarcely 
dip a handful without stirring the bottom, yet these are the 
sources of the slightly brackish water which serves for men and 
beasts. The country has everywhere wastes and flats, white and 
smooth with salt. 

When we alighted at the station at Baku a uniformed officer 
addressed me in Russian, asking if my name was " Garrison." 
There is no Russian " H," and the first letter of my name is 
always rendered with a " G." A bright German commercial 
traveller, Mr. Zigenfus, a fellow-voyager, informed me that the 
officer was the chief of police, who was directed by the governor 
of Baku to meet us and to see that we were properly provided for. 
Our good friend Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff had dispatched to 
the governor a request that he tender us assistance in seeing what 
was of interest during our stay. The aid was timely, for my 
pocket had been picked the night before of a few roubles and the 



A KINDL V RECEP TION A T BAKU. 4 2 3 

receipt for our baggage in the luggage-van. We would, but for 
this, have had much red tape to unravel before getting our valises. 
The telegram from " the governor-general of all Caucasus " to 
the " governor of Baku " was, however, a talisman which soon 
gave us our traps. Hardly were we in our hotel before the sec- 
retary of the governor appeared, saying he was delegated by the 
governor to take charge of us, and regretting that his chief had 
been compelled to leave town that morning, but had before 
leaving, countersigned a permit for us to go to Samarcand. The 
permit, it seems had that morning been sent the prince from the 
War Department, and he had forwarded it, with the further re- 
quest that we be otherwise assisted. Am I to be blamed if I find 
my prejudices against the Russians fast dissolving into thin air, 
or for the warm feeling the good old soldier-prince had awakened 
in my heart ? 

It was, however, too late for us to take advantage of the per- 
mit. We had not funds for the trip, and to get them from Tiflis 
would entail further delay. With the full conviction that the 
very hot weather had soured the grapes, we left the permit unused. 
But now we are rather regretful that we have lost our opportunity. 
After all, what is, is right, and we are consoled, but we shall never 
think of Vanovsky, Russian Minister of War, who gave us this 
permit nineteen days after it was applied for without dwelling on 
his dilatory action, and uttering a gentle anathema aimed at Rus- 
sian red tape. There was no sense in the delay, no inquiries were 
made, but big bodies move slowly, and all ofificial matters in this 
land are big, and, therefore, must have a dignified gait. A com- 
mercial man whom we met at Tiflis had applied twenty days 
before, and yet was living in hopes. He, however, had business 
to do as he neared the Caspian and was not losing time. Mr. 
Lothrop, in reply to my first request to get the permit in four 
days, said : " Four days is a very short time to do any thing in 
Russia." There are in the Greek Church an intolerable number 
of fete-days — two hundred, I am told. On these days nothing is 
done. We wished to give out our wash on Saturday. " No use," 
the hotel people said ; "to-morrow and next day are fete-days — 
holidays: you must wait till Tuesday," Banks are closed, and, as 
government studiously inculcates the dogmas of the church, the 
ofificials scrupulously observe every holiday. There were several 
holidays during the time we awaited our permit. 

The polite secretary took us during the evening to the club in 
the governor's garden (a public park and the only patch of trees 
in the city) and early the next day accompanied us to Balakhana 
the oil town, eight miles from the city. As we approached, it 
presented the appearance of a Turkish cemetery, with tall, spire- 
like cypress trees close together. These were the black derricks 
over the wells, in the neighborhood of 400 on a space about 
a mile square. Here, on this little spot, come from below the 



424 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

countless millions of gallons of naphtha (crude oil), which so 
much interferes with the oil-kings of America. There are wells 
in other localities about Baku, but the principal ones are at Bala- 
khana. Here some five or six or more years ago a firm struck 
" ile " so furiously that they were ruined by the very vastness of 
the product ; for weeks or months a million puds of oil poured 
out daily, carrying vast quantities of sand, which ingulfed the 
houses and works of neighboring firms, and made a great lake 
near by and then flowed off to the sea. The damages wrought, 
ruined the owners of the well, and their poor engineer, una- 
ble to chain the monster, died of a broken heart. The lake 
has sunk down, but still its bed, around which we drove, was 
soggy with oil. We saw a well, bored four or five months 
ago. It belched forth for days 250,000 puds a day of oil and 
sand, covering one-story houses around it on nearly a half acre of 
land. The sand finally ceased to come up, and then for days 
from 100,000 to 200,000 puds a day spouted 20 feet in the air. 
It is now controlled, and over 50,000 puds flow off every 24 hours 
to the tanks. 

It is said the Russian oil-fields stretch over a length of nearly 
1,000 miles, but have only a narrow breadth of six to ten 
miles. At a short depth below the surface, at Balakhana, oil is 
reached. At first it flows for a greater or less number of months; 
then has to be pumped. If this diminishes too much the auger 
is inserted, and at a lower depth again it spurts up. The wells 
are close together, there being 400 on a mile square — and even 
on this surface and quite in the middle there is a spot, a quarter of 
a mile square, on which no oil has been obtained ; around it 
stands the productive wells. The flow from one seems to be 
entirely unaffected by that of another a few yards removed. 
When the great well, bored a few. months since to 130 fathoms, 
poured forth its vast supply, no perceptible change was noticed 
in that of its nearest neighbors. Though they were not near so 
deep. A pud is 40 Russian pounds. This well, therefore, poured 
out from 2,000 to 4,000 tons a day for a week, and now, under con- 
trol, gushes up 800 tons a day, and not a quickened or lessened pul- 
sation is observed in a dozen wells within 100 or 200 feet, some of 
them not reaching a third of its depth, and others below its bot- 
tom. These wells about Baku are delivering annually about 
120,000,000 puds, or say 2,000,000 of our tons. I may be largely 
over or under the correct figures, but when one deals with such 
vast numerals the ordinary reader is sufificiently informed, even 
though an error of a few figures occurs. 

A part of Baku is called the " black town," because of the 
smoke which formerly arose from the great kerosene manufacto- 
ries therein situated. Twenty millions of puds of clarified, dis- 
tilled, burning oil are sent each year up the Volga to be dis- 
tributed throughout the north, and 10,000,000 over the railroad 



WONDERFUL OIL WELLS. 425 

to the Black Sea. These figures are, I think, correct. At a dozen 
or more stations we met or passed great trains with 20 to 30 
huge cistern cars, such as are used in America, only larger, filled 
with kerosene. Five hundred ships ply in and out of the har- 
bor distributing this oil. It now burns as the head-lights, and 
the residuum as the regular fuel of locomotives on daily trains 
running 1,000 miles beyond the Caspian into Central Asia. Who 
knows ? Perhaps this is the light from the west which is to illumine 
the heart of the great continent ; material light, to bring in its wake 
a purer spiritual light ! The oil of these regions is not so strong 
as that of Pennsylvania and does not emit the same disagreeable 
odor. While at Balakhana we walked upon a soil sodden with 
oil, we skirted little lakes of oil, we crossed on little bridges over 
flowing streams of oil ; streams large enough to turn good-sized 
mill-wheels. There was a greasy smell about it, but not as much 
of what we at home call petroleum smell as one catches from a 
half dozen of our oil barrels. Only 25 percent, of this oil can be 
refined into kerosene. The Pennsylvania oil yields from 60 to 75. 
While far less burning-fluid comes from this than from the same 
amount of American oil, yet it is claimed here that the larger 
refuse is much more valuable — more valuable for lubricating and 
for heating purposes. It is used for heating in every way. Food 
is cooked with it, stoves in the houses have pipes over the grates 
with a faucet. A man lights a fire and turns a faucet and keeps 
his room warm. Manufactories use no other fuel, except to light 
up with, for it does not burn well except over a high heat. Loco- 
motives burn it, and ships and steamboats have dispensed with 
coal, and use only a few cords of wood a month to start up with. 
The engineer of a locomotive steps from his engine with a white 
shirt-front, cleaner far than that of the first class passenger, who, 
being behind, catches more or less dust. The fireman's clothes 
are greasy from the oil he uses on the machine, but his face needs 
no washing when he goes to his dinner. The fire roars in the fire- 
box, and the steam screams when the throttle is turned, and the 
train rushes at the rate of 30 miles an hour, but the plates in 
front of the fire-box are as clean as my lady's tiled hearth in the 
parlor. We rushed up the river from the sea to Astrakhan at the 
rate of 16 versts an hour on a steamer. I went down into the 
boiler-room, and all was as clean as in a first-class kitchen, and 
under each boiler there was less than a capful of ashes, made 
early in the day when a few sticks of wood were burned to start 
the flame. 

■ The agent of the steamer company told me that one pound of 
this fuel had as much evaporating power as a pound and a half 
of the best coal. At Baku it costs one and one half kopecks 
a pud, at Astrakhan about seven, and the average price thence 
up to Nijni, 1,530 miles, is about 14 kopecks; the price increas- 
ing as the distance increases from the suppl}^. 



426 A RACE WITH THE SUAT. 

But the cost is far from being the only gauge of its superiority 
as a fuel. There is no smoke from the smoke-pipes, and no 
cinders to fill passengers' eyes. Fuel is run into the fuel- 
tank in the locomotive tender as easily as water is, and the 
stoker keeps up his fire by now and then turning a faucet. An 
engineer turned off the oil at the faucet in the fire-box of a loco- 
motive, and the monster rushed along with only a tiny burning 
jet under its boilers. A tap by a small gavel at the faucet set the 
fire-box to roaring. On a large steamer, for my amusement, the 
engineer shut off the fire entirely, and all was black in the furnace, 
while the ship ploughed through the waves. A simple light tap 
from a mallet not larger than a hen's egg filled the fire-box with 
a seething infernal flame. The steam can be got up before a fire 
can be made to burn with coal ; stoker's labor is saved for feeding 
the grates, and entirely saved in emptying the ash-boxes. I have 
not yet been able to find how far north this fuel is used on rail- 
roads, but in Caucasus and Transcaspia none other is employed, 
and among the vast number of steamers for passengers and tow- 
ing on the Volga no other fuel is consumed. I am informed that 
already a decided improvement is visible in the salvage of forests, 
and possibly it will bring an increase in rainfall. The commerce 
on the Volga is so vast, and on the railroads leading to it, and 
the consequent destruction of forests was so great that the stream 
was certainly losing its depth, owing to the lessened rains. For- 
ests are being saved, and the Volga will be deeper. This infor- 
mation, from the agent and one of the directors of the great Cau- 
casus Mercury Steamboat Company, a man of very decided 
intelligence, ought to have weight. He said to me, when discussing 
the matter, if there was no other benefit from naphtha fuel, this 
alone would make it a national blessing. 

After our return from Balakhana we received a call from the 
Mayor of Baku, and an invitation to dine with him. Like my- 
self, he has served his city for eight years. His rule is said to 
have been of great benefit to it, if not of pleasure to himself. 
After an elegant dinner with some very agreeable gentlemen, Mr. 
Despote Zenovitch, the mayor, took us in a steam-barge out 
some miles to witness the wonderful spectacle of a burning sea. 
We were fortunate in having a calm night, and thus in having a 
fine exhibition of this unique phenomenon. Over quite a large 
surface of the outer bay escaping gas from its hidden depths 
boils up in the sea as if in a great cauldron. Some of these 
boiling spots are only a few feet in diameter, while others are 
several yards wide. They can be found at night by following the 
odor of the gas. We got on the right track, and were proceeding 
very quietly, when my attention was called to a seething sound, 
as if from a monster mass of foaming champagne. Then I saw 
the water boiling and rolling away. A piece of lighted tow was 
thrown into the vortex, and immediately the whole surface of the 



A BURNING SEA. 427 

sea for some yards was in a blaze. Our little barge's course, 
though slackened, carried her over the cauldron, and the flames 
rolled up on her sides, but vanished as the barge passed over the 
gas source. Then we changed our wheel, and when a jet came 
from under her bow another bit of blazing tow was thrown in, 
and again another fluid fire-works. Presently another barge, 
brought out by the calm evening, approached, and added her 
share to the spectacle. At one time, when she happened over a 
very large cauldron of gas, her hull was enveloped in flame. I 
was told that the heat evolved is so small that a wooden boat can 
safely pass through a very considerable blaze. It was a rare 
sight, and one which few see, and, I think, no others than those 
who visit Baku. 

Not far off, but on the other side of the bay, gas rises every- 
where from the sands. Push a cane deep down and draw it up 
carefully so as not to destroy the hole it makes, then apply a 
match, and a gaslight can be had sometimes several feet high. 
The Tartars suspend their kettles over holes thus made and boil 
their fish. They dig a small pit into the sand, fill it with lime- 
stone, set fire to the gas percolating the mass, and burn lime. 

At Surakhani, a little farther off, is an old Persian temple, 
where, until quite recently, a flame was burning, said to have 
been lighted before Zoroaster gave his divine laws. It was 
deemed by the fire-worshippers to have been ignited by God, 
and to have been burning from the beginning, and that its ex- 
tinction would presage the destruction of the world. One can 
readily comprehend the awe with which a superstitious people 
would regard a flame burning for ages with no apparent fuel for its 
food. They could readily believe it to be fed by the eternal 
breath of the god of fire. Here Parsee priests attended the 
burning shrine for thousands of years, and pilgrimages were made 
to its sacred flames by fire-worshippers from the farthest limits 
of Persia until quite lately. 

Our guide-book told us that there was a decided smell of oil 
about Baku, because the dust was kept down by sprinkling the 
streets with naphtha. The good mayor seemed amused at the 
fiction. There is but little smell in the town, and the oil was 
never used for such purposes. The name of " black town " is 
now a misnomer for that quarter in which the refineries are situ- 
ated. Since the complete use of residuum has become successful, 
by breaking up the oil jet under a boiler with a jet of steam, but 
little smoke is evolved. I wish our cities where great palaces 
burn soft coal were any thing like as free from smoke. From the 
water at night the city presents a beautiful sight. The vast num- 
ber of street- and house-lights lifting up from the rounded bay 
gives it the appearance of a brilliantly illuminated and vast amphi- 
theatre. Street-lamps are very close to each other, and every 
window is lighted. The city is pretty, too, by day from the bay, 



428 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

with its old fortress and lofty tower built by the great Queen 
Tamara long ages ago. When the wells were bored here a few 
years since there was scarcely any town outside of the walled 
fortress, now there is a population of 60,000 to 70,000. The 
Russian scientists feel satisfied that there will be practically no 
end to the supply of oil. To my inquiry if he thought the oil 
would last forever, the Mayor of Baku replied, " No ! it will give 
out after a while, perhaps, in about 1,000,000 years." A very 
bright young German lad acted as our guide and cicerone at 
Balakhana. To my question how it was accounted for that wells 
could be bored so close to each other and find oil at such greatly 
differing depths — that is, from 200 to nearly 1,000 feet — and yet 
in no way interfere with the supply one of another, he pointed 
to the veins in the back of his hand, saying: " There is the solu- 
tion : there are veins running near each other, but totally separ- 
ated, and at different depths, and all fed by a vast oil river far 
below any of them." 

While I write it is two o'clock in the afternoon. I am finishing 
this letter on the Volga. The sun is but rising at Chicago. Guns 
are firing, for it is July 4th, the birthday of my country — of my 
own, my native land. May it give happiness to countless millions 
through countless ages ! 



CHAPTER XLL 

THE VOLGA RIVER AND MIGHTY TRAFFIC— ASTRAKHAN— KAZAN— 
NIJNI NOVGOROD— RAFTS— THE PEOPLE— THE GREAT FAIR. 

Volga River and at Nijui Novgorod, July 12, 1888. 

Several persons, among them the American Consul, being 
also English Resident at Moscow, told us we would find the 
Volga utterly uninteresting, except for a short distance near 
Samara, and advised us by no means to ascend it from Astrakhan ; 
that if we were determined to travel along it, then to descend it 
instead of going up, which would take at least two days longer. 
We chose, however, to go south by rail and then return north by 
river, so as to get up with our correspondence on the steamers, 
and thus avoid the necessity for stopping a day or two anywhere 
to bring up to date. Instead of being wearied by monotony, 
we have found this mighty stream very interesting. There is to 
me always a charm in moving along the bosom of a great river — 
a charm all its own, and of which the ocean is utterly devoid. 
The ocean gives its pleasures, but they are wholly different from 
those afforded by the running stream. One learns to regard a 
river as an entity, as a separate and distinct and, to some extent, 
a sentient thing, with which one can hold communion, and to 
which one gives ai^ection and friendship, and all with a vague 
feeling that there is a species of reciprocation. I look down upon 
its floods, and can imagine I hear them laughing and see them 
dancing far above in a hundred little pellucid rills — laughing and 
dancing in dark shades of forest, never sad, however deep the 
leafy gloom about them ; stealing in quiet glee through grassy 
meadows, now leaping up in tiny wavelets to catch the airy but- 
terfly which ventures too near on its gilded wing, then with gentle 
murmurs striving to join in the chorus of singing birds in the 
blossoming bush overhanging it. I hear the woodman's axe far off 
on the lonely upland side ; its sad tone comes now from close by 
in yonder wood, then from afar off, bending and stealing through 
the forest trunks — now loud and distinct, then scarcely heard. 
I hear the song of the maiden as she trips along the brook-side, 
and stoops to lave her brown hands in its cool shallows, and, 
throwing a leaf into the rapid channel, watches to see if it be car- 
ried into the whirling stream below or is floated off into the calm, 

429 



430 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN. 

eddying pool at the side— and is gay or sad as she thus learns her 
coming fate. I hear the low of kine and bleat of flocks as they 
come down to drink at the little river-bank, and the laughter of 
villagers along its margin ; and the sound of hammers and work- 
shops in cities on the same little river, now grown into a navigable 
stream. The river talks to me, and tells me of these and other 
things on its upper line. It catches my sympathy and returns 
it. For we were both once little infants, now grown to manhood. 
We have had our struggles in vain to go upward ; we have had 
our ever-downward march. I stand and look down upon the 
deep flood slipping from beneath our keel, and passing ofT, like 
me, with the oft-repeated questions, " Whither? What? How?" 
There are pleasures to be derived from the shores of rivers; the 
mountain, bare and bleak or green and wooded ; the hill in shrub 
and verdure, with villages and houses and flocks; the undulating 
plain in waving field or close-cropped turf. These give pleasure, 
but are not sympathizers in my moods. The rivers themselves 
speak to me and commune with me. 

I have grown to be the friend of not a few within the last year, 
since we began our " race with the sun." The Columbia, with its 
white current, and rocky precipices dyed in purple and as soft as 
velvet in tone; the mighty Yang-tse-Kiang, moving in grand and 
deep majesty ; the Pearl, covered by thousands of Chinese boats, 
and floating a city ; the Menam, overhung by hundred-rooted 
banyans, and about which tiny canoes steal like darting water- 
bugs ; the Irrawaddy, reflecting 25,000 pagodas to propagate the 
faith of Gautama, whose charity did not forget the tiniest insect. 
We touched again and again the holy Ganges, which has washed 
away the sins of countless millions, and can make clean the 
human heart, though steeped in crimes of the blackest dye. We 
crossed the great Indus and its several branches, beyond which 
the world's conqueror, Alexander, could not carry his victorious 
army. Then we lived for days upon "Old Nilus," whose hoary 
head has been ever lost in the centre of the Dark Continent, and 
the Danube, washing the greenest fields and the most golden 
vineyards of Europe. And now the Volga! These rivers, or all 
but two at least, I count my familiar friends. 

No such feeling is ever awakened by the sea; on its bosom one 
watches the mighty swells marking the deep respirations of old 
ocean. Whence they come and whither they go they tell not, 
nor can one guess. They arise from the vasty deep, and die 
away on the boundless wastes. One can watch the monster 
waves lifting in foamy crest, hungry for human prey. Angry and 
fierce, they repel every human emotion, except fear and awe. 
They ask no sympathy— they give none. From out of fathomless 
caves they rush, and, sullen, return to their gloomy homes. I 
love not the ocean, and dread its angry moods. Its calms are 
treacherous ; its ripples are deceitful ; its storms paralyze ; its 



THE VOLGA AND THE TRAFFIC ON IT. 431 

depths are a maw giving back no return ; it is a far-reaching 
reahn, with no single ray of a redeeming love to light or cheer. 
I love it not, and never go upon its bosom without a dread of its 
frown. 

The Volga is Europe's largest river, and is one of the grandest 
of the world. With a length of 2,300 miles, it is navigable by 
large steamers for near 1,600, and for comfortable steamers and 
broad barges for 550 miles more. Its head is in the Voldai Hills, 
near St. Petersburg, in the northwestern part of Russia. Its main 
branches — in fact, the main river, the Kama — has its source in 
the northeast quarter of the empire, and unites with the true Volga 
about midway in its course. This great river — formed by these 
two branches and their several hundred affluents, many of them 
navigable — spreads like a huge vein with innumerable feeding- 
veins over one of the richest and largest grain-producing districts 
of the world. Its deep waters abound in fish fit for an epicure's 
table. The taking of them gives employment to a vast number 
of people — upward of 30,000 on the main river, — and furnish an 
ever-ready supply of food to millions. Dried fish lie in great 
uncovered piles about the cities and villages, in markets and 
groceries, and one sees barges 200 feet long, covered with cured 
fish piled in ricks 20 feet high, the heads of the outside course 
protruding in regular layers, and looking like some new style or 
pattern of stonework. Six hundred and odd steamers ply the 
river. The one I now write on is 330 feet long, 60 feet beam, 
with engines of 800-horse-power, and makes a speed of 20 versts 
an hour. 

Passenger steamers ply daily along the entire river for over 
2,000 miles — I, perhaps, will not err if I say 2,100 and odd miles 
— up and down with every comfort for first and second-class 
passengers at from$i to $1.75 for 100 miles, not including meals; 
a good dinner, however, costing about 40 cents; and comfortable 
quarters with good sleeping-bunks for third-class passengers at 
from 26 to 30 cents for 100 miles. Innumerable barges of large 
size, some of them over 200 feet long and of good breadth, and 
drawing 8 to 12 feet when loaded, are being constantly towed 
in long strings up and down by powerful tow-boats, one of which 
I saw having 1,800 horse-power, and drawing barges on which 
were loaded 1,100,000 puds, or 44,000,000 pounds. So many Ifow 
or passenger-boats are met that they themselves enliven the voy- 
age. Vast numbers of rafts are constantly seen below the mouth 
of the Kama, and some above. These are of all lengths, from 
200 feet to a quarter of a mile. They are built in sec- 
tions, so that at any time one can be detached and disposed 
of. Many of these rafts have upon them comfortable log-houses 
of one, two, or more rooms, glazed and ornamental. The rafts- 
men live in, and at the end of their journey sell them at a profit 
to be taken down and re-erected — a sort of ready-made house. 



432 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

These log-houses are so peculiarly a Russian institution, and 
are so pretty that they deserve a description. The logs are per- 
fectly straight, dressed smooth, the inner side flattened, the outer 
left rounded, the upper and lower side brought to a straight edge, 
or perhaps with a slight groove. The cross logs are so let into 
each other that they fit down close, leaving the ends projecting 
a half-foot more very ornamentally. The logs are let down upon 
each other with calking or a hair-felting between, making them 
thoroughly close. We have seen some quite large houses of this 
kind, two stories high, and with many rooms. The partitions, 
being all of the same structure, are shown by the projecting ends, 
making a pretty relief. Generally throughout the wooded coun- 
try, and in small towns and villages, the houses are of wood, the 
better ones built in this style. Sometimes the logs are ripped in 
half, but the rounded side is always out. In some localities the 
space between the logs is calked with tow or a fine-broken grass or 
moss, perhaps usually with hemp-tow. We have seen officers' 
quarters near encampments built in this manner and painted a 
brown-red, but generally all wooden houses are unpainted. 
Paint, except on a roof, is evidently not to the taste of these 
people. There is no kind of house for a wooded suburb which 
is as pretty as these of logs. 

There is another wood-carrier on this river of a remarkable 
character and used for sawed lumber — a keel-boat, 150 to 200 
feet long, of heavy boards, well calked, but without deck. In this 
sawed or hewn timber is laid across with the beam, increasing in 
length as the flare of the hull increases, so as to fill it closely. 
When the top of the hull is reached boards are packed on, main- 
taining the flare of the hull, and up to a height of several feet, 
then the flare rapidly increases, until the top juts over the whole 
hull many feet. On the water the thing looks like a great boat, 
the upper part not yet boarded, with a breadth of nearly 100 feet. 
On this upper deck are generally one, two, or more of the ready- 
made log-houses above named. The amount of lumber on one 
of these hulls is enormous. They are generally floated down in 
high water only, and stranded when sold. We saw many of them 
far down the Volga. As the stranded hull is unloaded it falls 
out to the side. No sawed lumber is carried down the river, 
except on these crafts. The number of rafts, however, is very 
great, the logs coming mainly from the Kama River, and its 400 
affluents, to be sawed up below when used. 

There are many large flouring-mills in different cities along the 
river, one of them, I was told, turning out many thousand 
puds of flour. Every city, town, and village has numbers of 
windmills. On the high ground back of one moderately-sized 
village, I counted 39, Everywhere in the land the bulk of the 
peasant-grinding is done by the wind. Going south by rail we 
saw many hundreds. In some of the steam-mills wheat-meal is 



RUSSIAN BREAD. JJ'OMElV. 433 

■made instead of flour — a rounded grit as coarse as our fine corn- 
meal. The bread from this is dehcious. Bad bread seems to be 
a rare exception in Russia. Bread is the food of the people, the 
working people living on black bread, but it, too, is of excellent 
quality. One sees bread for sale in every kind of store in the 
smaller towns. I have thus been enabled to examine a great 
many specimens. No one ever objected to my "hefting " a loaf. 
It always seemed light and never sour, and as the loaves are made 
very large (say a foot and a half in diameter when round, or 
when oblong, 10 inches by 15 to 20 long), and are cut to sell 
to small purchasers, I could examine it well. I have never 
seen such bread in any other country. I wish Russia would ex- 
port many of her bakers to America — who can beat the world in 
making sour bread and sodden biscuits. It is an exception when 
one gets really good bread in a small town in the United States, 
and even in our large cities one seldom finds as sweet and tooth- 
some a loaf as is had here everywhere. I have talked of this to 
several commercial travellers — that modern race of sharp men 
throughout the world — and am informed that throughout Russia 
there is rarely ever seen a bad loaf. It is made here of many 
kinds — for eating with meat, for tea and coffee, plain or slightly 
sprinkled with seed and sugar, purely white, purely rye, and 
mixed. Like the Orientals, the people do not seem to think bread 
can get dirty. It is, therefore, piled on tables and counters, and 
small rings and pretzels are hung on strings exposed to the dust, 
and hucksters peddle the small rings on the dustiest roads. The 
common laboring women wear a sort of coarse woollen sacque, 
very loose and tied in at the waist. The bosom of this sacque is 
a sort of carry-all. One can see one of these women pack into 
this greasy receptacle a half-bushel of rings and small white bread. 
I suppose such is not made in the peasant village. The bread 
must be savory by the time it reaches the hamlet, several versts 
away. 

The women along the Volga all seem to do their full share of 
work, even of the heaviest kind. Among the fishermen she rows 
the boat while her man casts the net. She trundles barrows and 
carries stone, loads wagons, and carries wood and heavy freight 
upon the steamers, and helps to build embankments on the 
railroads. She is man's helpmeet, and I rather think, meets him 
more than half way. But I think she does it of her own free 
will. For she is too tough and strapping for her lord to force 
against her will. She could hold her own in a fair fight, and has 
many opportunities for taking an unfair advantage, for all the 
peasant men have the luxurious habit of getting very frequently 
gloriously drunk. They go to the cities for great distances on 
important fete days. They pray and cross themselves to an aston- 
ishing extent all the forenoon and even up to one or two o'clock, 
when the church services end, and then they drink like fish. We 



434 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

have been lucky in being in cities on holy days. The other day 
at Kazan was the great fete of the year ; over 100,000 peasants 
were in town. We drove out along the roads leading to the 
country, and saw the peasants returning to their villages, some 
perhaps 10, 15, and even 20 versts away. They were afoot and 
in wagons, the latter having a sort of wicker body, and without 
springs. Some wagons held two or three, some five to eight. Every 
man, in wagons or afoot, was more or less intoxicated. Here were 
a couple arm-in-arm, in hot but good-natured discussion ; there a 
half-dozen with arms about each other's neck, singing and happy. 
Here a woman dragging her husband along ; there she props him 
up in a wagon ; here they lie in the bottom of the vehicle ; there 
sitting in it and swaying back and forth. Sometimes there were 
a half-dozen men with arms over each other's neck, the outer one 
having his arm over a young woman, all singing at the top of 
their voices as they reeled from side to side along their homeward 
road. 

The women, in such cases, seemed thoroughly sober but 
amused by their male companions, whom they were convoying 
safely home. Some of them were, perhaps, their brothers. 
I have never seen as many drunken men at one time, 
nor, indeed, on 50 or 100 occasions together, as I saw on one road 
here during a half-hour. At one locality there were several 
dozens of houses about an open space, a sort of wagon-yard. 
These were all filled with men who were laying in their supply of 
drink. In one wagon were four men asleep on the bottom, a 
woman and little boy driving. The woman did not seem at all 
put out. She took it as a thing of course. There were a few 
nearly grown lads somewhat high. Men of 30 and under were 
full and jolly, from 30 to 40 full and stupid. Nearly all the old 
chaps were clean gone and asleep. I spoke to a gentleman of 
what I had seen. He said he doubted not that nine out of ten 
of all the thousanosof male peasants in town that day went home 
considerably intoxicated, and the bulk of them thoroughly 
drunk. These are the descendants almost pure of the old Scyth- 
ians of 2,000 years ago, great drunkards at that far-away period. 

A very prominent physician from Moscow, a travelled man 
and one of our fellow-passengers, tells me he does not think the 
Russians drink as much as the Germans, but that they are the 
only people in the world who drink on empty stomachs and be- 
fore eating. To that he ascribed the drunkenness, and says the 
peasants do not hide it when drunk, for among themselves it is 
no disgrace. They are not quarrelsome, nor very noisy, but are 
thoroughly good-natured. When boozy, a Russian's great desire 
is to go to sleep, and if permitted, sleeps of¥ all of his drunk. 

Kazan is a very picturesque city on the east side of the river, 
and was for long years the last spot from which the exile to 
Siberia looked back toward his lost home. Here he entered that 



KAZAN. SUPERSTITIONS. 435 

great steppe land which was to be his almost trackless road into 
cold and bleak Northern Asia. It was the capital of the Kazan 
Tartars for centuries, and now has some 10,000 of their descend- 
ants in the free enjoyment of their religion and customs. They 
have not the coarse Mongolian face of those about Baku, but 
all have the outstanding ear with large stem. The city has a 
population of nearly 150,000, some fine buildings, a large univer- 
sity, and many fine churches. In the cathedral within the Krem- 
lin, we witnessed the imposing ceremony of the reception of the 
Ikon of the "Virgin of Kazan," which, by divine miracle, escaped 
unharmed the terrible conflagration which swept over the city in 
the sixteenth century. After a long and beautiful ceremony, the 
Ikon was brought in by two sisters of the monastery, which has 
it in sacred charge. The bells throughout the city pealed in wild 
acclaim, and the people seemed almost beside themselves with 
joy. Received with profound veneration by the archbishop and 
his long list of assisting bishops and priests, it was carried in pro- 
cession, followed and surrounded by the bishops, through several 
streets, to a booth on a low plain, where the " Ikon from Smo- 
lensk " and another were met. Then the bells again pealed in 
wild noise, and the 100,000 people and over, on the Kremlin 
heights and in the adjacent streets bowed and crossed themselves 
in a religious fervor bordering upon frenzy. The sun's rays were 
pouring down fiercely, yet every head was uncovered for an hour 
or more while the procession slowly moved, and every man, 
woman, and child bowed and crossed themselves, bowed and 
crossed, again and again,"until I almost felt theirs was a muscular 
religion requiring as much activity of the vertebral column and 
of the right arm as that of a trapeze performer. 

The Virgin Mother of God visits the city once a year and re- 
mains one month, and her Ikon is daily carried from church to 
church, when she again leaves, the sins of the city being too 
great for her to remain longer. During this month she receives 
from 50,000 to 100,000 roubles from the grateful people, whom 
she blesses by her presence. The Kremlin wall stands on high 
ground ; from its foot a sloping grassy bank drops down nearly 
100 feet, and then runs off into a broad decline. During the 
procession we witnessed, this bank for a considerable length, the 
walls above, and the incline below, was a dense mass of pious 
people, mostly peasants. They were in their holiday dress, light 
red being the dominant color. Then came pink and purple and 
white. Looking upon this mass of people, we saw a picture to 
which the pencil of a Teniers or a Van Dyke could hardly have 
done justice. We had admirable opportunities for witnessing the 
ceremonies within and without the church, for the police, who 
were necessary to keep the pious masses from crushing upon the 
holy orders, recognizing us as strangers, permitted us to stand 
among the privileged classes. 



436 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

The ceremonies of the Greek Church, which we have now seen 
on three prominent fete-days — at the Cathedral of the Saviour, 
in Moscow, the cathedral in Tiflis, and then at Kazan — are very- 
imposing, and the music simply exquisite. No organ or any 
other instrument is permitted, but the choirs of men and boys 
are thoroughly trained. The chanted responses from the choir 
are wonderfully sweet and touching, and the whole, I think, 
more impressive and much more religious in tone than when 
accompanied by the organ. But the mass of ceremony — the 
bowing and kneeling; the crossing and kissing of symbols; the 
intense veneration of Ikons and pictures ; the manipulation of 
robes and vestments, degenerated into an absolute idolatry as 
intense as any thing to be witnessed in Hindoo worship or Chi- 
nese pageantry, and lacking the deep, heart-reaching simplicity 
of the Buddhist forms. An intelligent Russian, a firm supporter 
of the Greek Church, said to me to-day that this intense formal- 
ism was all for the ignorant peasants, and that to him it bor- 
dered upon atheism, the extreme of idolatry and absolute un- 
belief meeting in the excessive formalism of the church. At 
times, during the movement of the procession at Kazan the tens 
of thousands of people looking on would bow and cross themselves 
for several minutes continuously, looking like thousands of life- 
size supple jacks worked by a single string ; and some who 
had space enough, would drop upon their knees and bow their 
heads upon the ground, and now and then could be heard a man 
chattering as if in an ecstasy of worship. In the churches, cere- 
mony follows ceremony in quick succession, as the receiving the 
Bible and kissing it; the elevation of the Host; the preparation of 
the wine and bread, gone through by archbishop and the assist- 
ing bishops; the kissing each piece of vestment as it is put upon 
the prelate; the kneeling before and kissing the sacred symbol; 
the many points where the entire audience has to bow and cross 
itself, and where all have to kneel and many to abase themselves 
so as to bring the forehead to the ground ; the marching out 
into the body of the church or in front of the screen, which shuts 
off the high and sacred altar or inner tabernacle from the main 
church by the priesthood ; and then the counter-marching and 
bowing to each other, lifting frequently some piece of robe as a 
lady lifts her favor to her partner in a dance ; the frequent 
removal of tiaras or gilded hats, and then the replacing them 
with formal ceremony ; the constant moving of many priests 
with long, flowing locks, often curled and hanging far over the 
shoulders and mingling with the flowing beard ; these ceremonies 
are so numerous and long-continued, and all so eagerly watched 
by the ignorant masses, that I was forced to the conclusion that 
the main features of the Russo-Greek religion are simply in a 
close observance of outward forms, and that the piety of the 
people is mostly in externals. And when to this is added the 



RELIGION VERGING UPON IDOLATRY. 437 

observance by the people of the outward form of crossing and 
removing of hats and short prayers before the many Ikons and 
shrines which Hne the streets, before which few pass without some 
ceremony, the low and illiterate never; and then the fact that 
after a day spent in this outward ceremony of worship, thousands 
of men will give themselves up to besotted drunkenness ; and 
when so drunk that they can scarcely totter, if a shrine should 
be passed, they will drop upon their knees and cross them- 
selves frantically, and chatter out a maudlin prayer — when one 
sees all of these things and compares them to the slavish idolatry 
of the far Orient — an idolatry as sincere as any thing here 
seen, but not more slavish — the question arises, is not the one 
nearly as idolatrous as the other, and will not the good God listen 
to the worship of the ignorant in the far East through their 
symbols as he listens to these? And will He not meet out to 
all in accordance with individual sincerity and personal merit ? 

At Kazan there is a pretty garden or park, where a regimental 
band plays every evening. The frequenters are of all classes. 
Willie, with a sigh, declared he did not see even a fairly good- 
looking woman during the two evenings we promenaded in the 
park. There were several Tartar women so veiled as to show 
only their eyes. His imagination worked them up into Oriental 
beauties. Seeing them sitting apart and rather removed from the 
crowd, with their mantles thrown back from their faces, we 
passed before them on a reconnoitring expedition. They were 
painted and smiled upon us, evidently open for acquaintance. 
They were of the sinners who prevent the "Virgin of Kazan" 
from dwelling longer than a month each year in her old home. 
The music played in this garden till full midnight. Even then, 
there was a streak of day along the northern horizon. The clatter 
of vehicles under our window going to and from the garden over 
the rough cobble pavements, and the music, kept me awake. 
Just at twelve there was a wild peal of bells. I supposed, at first, 
it a part of the fete ceremonies, but soon a glow was reflected 
from the tall building opposite our window, and people began to 
hurry toward the Kremlin. We followed. There was a fire — a 
large mill, which we had tried to enter during the day, but were 
repulsed, was burning. It was of wood, several stories high, and 
filled with flour and grain. It seemed to me the entire town was 
on the Kremlin heights. The illumination of the many church 
domes and gilded crosses of the tall bell-towers, and green roofs, 
and of the vast crowd, made a brilliant sight. The loss was over 
100,000 roubles, and 14 laborers about the establishment are, I am 
told, missing. There seems to be no attempt of the firemen to sub- 
due the flames. The building being detached, was allowed to 
burn at leisure. They, however, watched and used water about the 
other buildings where sparks were falling. 

The police force of provincial cities are not considered large 
enough for property protection. Private night-watchmen are 



438 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

employed. They sound a sort of rattle to disturb the night at 
frequent intervals, I believe, to tell thieves that they are about, 
and their employers that they themselves are not asleep. 

There are about 40 large cities along the Volga, and over 
1,000 towns and villages, and many of the latter large and cov- 
ering extensive spaces of ground. Astrakhan is virtually a sea- 
port, though it is 80 miles from the Caspian, at the head of the 
delta of the river. The Volga has many mouths, the two outer 
ones being perhaps 100 miles apart when they reach the sea. 
At the foot of the western mouth and a little out, is a sort of 
floating town called " Nine Foot," that being the depth of 
water on the bar. Here large ships unload upon smaller ves- 
sels and lighters. Above the bar the river is much deeper. 
Between the eastern and western channels of the delta and the 
other mouths is a low, flat, island country, with some cultivation, 
much grass, and a large number of cattle, and many fishing- 
villages. Few river cities make a larger display of vessels — ships, 
steamboats, and barges — than this old Tartar town. Hundreds 
are lying along its extensive piers and anchored out in the 
broad stream. It is a busy city of 70,000 people, with an old 
walled kremlin, many fine churches, some good public buildings, 
and substantially built up streets. Here are shown Peter the 
Great's little ship, built by his own hands, and many of his imple- 
ments. The whole was locked up when we were there, owing 
to some visitor having lately dropped and broken the old em- 
peror's drinking tankard. 

We have halted at Saratof and Samara, both worthy a visit. 
Before reaching the latter we passed under a magnificent railroad- 
bridge with 13 huge iron spans, and about 80 feet above the 
river. It is the only one on the Volga and is a noble work. 
The footings of the pier are far beneath the bed of the river. 

Nijni-Novgorod, the upper terminus for heavy river craft, 
1,530 odd miles from the sea, makes a great display of river 
craft. Hundreds of steamers and barges lie along the banks of 
the rivers, or are anchored in sets of from four or five up to 
a dozen out in the rivers. From this, for 500 or 600 miles farther 
up the river, lighter steamers are required. One line, distinguished 
as the " American steamers," are stern-wheelers, some of them 
fine specimens. Nijni-Novgorod is so celebrated for its great an- 
nual fair, that its beauty of situation and splendid views have been 
overlooked, and the traveller's attention has scarcely been called 
to them. Viewed from the river, it is exceedingly picturesque, 
and quite peculiar. The town of 60,000 or more, people is situ- 
ated on a peninsula, made by the confluence with the Volga of 
the Oka River, which comes up from the southwest, and is nearly 
as large as the main stream. Along the banks of these two 
rivers is a strip of nearly level land, ranging in width from lOO 
to 200 feet up to 500 or 600, and extending along the Volga and 



NIJNI-NOVGOROD. 439 

up the Oka two or more miles. This strip is closely built with 
nice stone houses, business places, and several handsome churches 
and a monastery or two. Behind these buildings lift very steep 
hills, 200 to 300 feet high, and rather level on top. On these 
the main city is built, many of its best houses and churches 
hfting from the crest of the hills and seen from the water. 
Between the hills come down deep ravines, and into them run 
other and smaller ones. The bottoms of all these have been 
handsomely graded into streets, with very steep, even slopes, 
lifting up to the hill-top. These slopes, both on the river and 
on the ravines, are prettily sodded, with here and there little 
bunches of vigorous trees. No houses are built on the slopes, 
except where, at the lower edges, a couple of monasteries with 
handsome churches slightly climb. The Kremlin's crenulated 
wall climbs up the hill on the Volga side, and with its towers, 
aided by churches, crowns its crest. Zigzag foot-roads, well 
graded, mount the sides of the slopes, and the deep-cut ravine 
roads are seen creeping upward from the water. Thus is given 
the peculiar picture of a city, with a sort of belt of green, beauti- 
fully sloping, and well kept hill-sides, running around and sepa- 
rating the upper from the lower town. The view of the city is 
beautiful. The views from the terraced gardens on the hills are 
magnificent — a vast plain, sufficiently wooded, with villages and 
many domed churches, with a mighty river reaching far to the 
north and to the south in graceful curves ; the plain beyond, cut 
here and there by smaller waters ; the river below, with barges 
and steamers by the hundred at anchor, and yet alive with many 
moving among the silent ones. No lines of smoke tarnish the 
pure air. These things make a glorious picture, and one well 
Avorth visiting, even though no fair were held here. Yet so great 
is the fair, that thousands visit it as a show, and hardly see the 
real beauties of the town. 

The locality of the great fair is on a flat plain, over and north 
of the Oka, and reached by along and very broad floating bridge. 
I had no conception of the extent of the buildings required for 
this great annual market, and supposed we would find a few tem- 
porary structures and large open spaces. Instead of that, we 
found a good-sized city, with miles and miles of well paved and 
thoroughly sewered streets, bordered by miles and miles of brick 
houses generally of two stories, but often of three, and quite 
a number of four. These streets are from a half mile to perhaps 
a mile and a quarter in length, some of them with walks through 
the centre, shaded by fine trees. Many of the buildings are 
pretty, and on some streets uniform in style. Nearly all have 
wide wooden awnings covering the sidewalks. Cutting across 
this city, which is oblong, are two or three broad canals — rivers in 
breadth, — crossed by bridges, and some spanned by houses of 
hght, pretty, and airy construction, elevated upon piles. All 



440 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

shops and warehouses are now closed, except where men and 
women are busy repairing and cleaning up for the vast gathering 
to be held in a couple of weeks. It was a curious thing to rattle 
over well paved streets among well built houses at mid-day, and 
find nearly every thing silent and deserted. If it had been night 
it would have seemed natural, for one could have imagined the 
citizens yet asleep. On some streets not a soul was visible. Our 
drosky rattled dismally, as in a city of the dead. In less than a 
month from now all will be different. Shops will be filled, and 
brilliant displays made of goods from all lands and of every peo- 
ple. Two hundred thousand people from many quarters of the 
world will be here jostling against each other ; and in five weeks' 
time products of scattered countries to the value of $100,000,000 
will have changed hands. 

The fair, I am told, however, is not what it was formerly. One 
no longer sees vast crowds of Asiatics, and long trains of camels 
laden with the goods of the far East. The Suez Canal has made 
all Europe neighbors of India and China, and the wealth of those 
far-off lands comes to the West on the ships of the sea, and not 
on the ships of the desert. I learned that one sees at the fair 
many people of many lands, but no longer, as formerly, in colo- 
nies redolent of Asiatic odors, and quaint and curious with 
Asiatic costumes and customs. Two hundred millions of roubles' 
worth of goods change hands, but the traders are nearly all Rus- 
sian, and the bulk of the goods is of this land. Still, it must be 
an interesting sight to see 200,000 people all in their own shops 
and warehouses, eager and anxious to crowd a year's dealing into 
a few weeks of time. One probably cannot see the peculiarities 
of many people, brought out in bold relief as formerly, but it must 
be a grand spot, for one who can speak the prevailing languages, 
to study human nature, and to watch it in its greed. Then, too, 
one can see it in moods other than when intent on trade. There 
are theatres, large and small, and all kinds of amusements. There 
are great churches, one of them — a splendid structure — open only 
during the fair. The whole thing is a state institution, the state 
owning the ground, the public buildings, and a large number, 
perhaps the great majority, of the storehouses and shops. Private 
persons, however, have built some, and have long leases on others. 
One sees signs over shops, beautiful in design, and costly, and, as 
yet, nothing has been in the shops since last September. The 
buildings are nearly all metal-roofed, and the roofs are all painted 
green. This seems almost universal among public buildings in 
Russia. One of our reasons for desiring to go to Samarcand, was 
that it would bring us here when the fair would be in progress. 
We, however, cannot afford to be long enough near it to come 
again. 

I said, in the beginning of this letter, that I found the Volga a 
charming river to travel on. It may, perhaps, be called rather 



THE TREND OF THE VOLGA. 441 

monotonous, for many of its long reaches are lacking in picturesque 
highlands, though these are not entirely wanting. It has one 
feature, I think, peculiar to itself. The bluffs and high grounds, 
such as it affords, are continuous on the right bank, and, with 
small exceptions, entirely lacking on the other. It seems to have 
trended all the time westward, occasionally forced, by barriers it 
could not surmount, to the east. This disposition is, I suppose, 
the result of the earth's easterly motion, leaving the freer water 
behind, which, therefore, takes a westward course as it flows to 
the sea. In parts of 'its course, and perhaps the greater part, 
it lies in a valley 10 to 20 miles wide. This valley is a depression 
in the great rolling steppe which spreads across southern Russia. 
The river hugs close under lofty cliffs or low hills on the right 
bank, leaving a broad, flat belt on the other shore, which it over- 
flows in its floods. In its normal path it is from three quarters 
of a mile to two miles wide. In its flood, for nearly l,ooo 
miles from its mouth, it is from 10 to 20 miles wide, spreading 
much wider at Astrakhan. Some of these bluffs are picturesque, 
varying from 60 to 100 and odd feet in height, in steep, rocky 
cliffs, washed into grotesque forms, and filled with deep caves. 
Above the bluffs the table-lands, more or less rolling, stretch off 
westward, and are the great grain fields of the country. Near 
Samara, between 900 and 1,000 miles from its mouth, the river 
comes upon a little range of mountains, 600 to 800 feet high. These 
bend it nearly 50 miles due east, when it breaks through them and 
immediately turns westward, making a lofty, narrow peninsula of 
the mountain range. Here the scenery for 100 or 200 miles is 
fine, and a part of it exceedingly so, the hills or mountains being 
beautifully wooded. 

Russia is said to have no spring or autumn ; it jumps out of 
winter into summer, from a pale cold sun into one of fiercest 
heat. I never felt a hotter sun than we had on the white, paved 
streets of Samara. We were driving, and being desirous of seeing 
the town well, were forced to be out at noon. At one time I 
became anxious lest one of us might receive a sunstroke. Our 
hats were covered with white silk and our umbrellas hoisted, yet 
the heat poured upon our heads almost as if they were uncovered. 
During the intense heat of noon the people keep much in-doors. 
The Samara streets at that hour were nearly deserted. The 
nights are so short that work can be commenced very early and 
kept up until ten o'clock. All who are able, take a long mid-day 
sleep. The peasants, however, seem impervious to heat. They 
can be seen working bareheaded under the fiercest rays. A result 
of these hot suns is a growth of vegetation intensely vigorous, 
which gives to the forests and wood-clad mountains a wonderful 
richness of verdure. The young shoots on the trees are sent for- 
ward so rapidly and bear so heavy a foliage that they droop and 
hang, adding to the dense appearance of the foliage. Many of 



442 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

the forest-trees can, at this time of the year, be called weeping. 
The birch, linden, and some other varieties of trees, even some of 
the firs, have young hanging twigs, swaying like drooping plumes. 
The crops of the fields push forward with remarkable rapidity. 
Having passed over the same latitudes less than a month before, 
we were enabled to measure the rapidity of growth. We stopped 
long enough at several towns to drive a few miles out to see 
something of the country, and occasionally, through breaks in the 
bluffs, with our glasses we could see the great rolling, cultivated 
lands behind. These, with the many villages along the river, 
their artistic coloring free from all glaring paint (in them the 
weather alone applies the brush and time tones into delicious 
harmony) ; the large churches, with green domes and lofty belfry ; 
the whirling windmills behind ; the great herds of cattle at noon 
at the water side, and towards night rushing from the upper lands 
through clouds of dust down for their evening bath ; the peasants 
in bright red, mowing grass and making hay ; and on Sunday and 
on a fete day crowds of people on the banks, brilliant in red and 
purple and blue ; the many steamers met cutting the water at 15 
miles an hour ; the tow-boats with long lines of barges swinging 
behind ; the huge rafts with new, bright, and pretty log-houses 
mounted upon them floating by; the fishermen landing nets or 
wading out with rod and line ; boys and girls in little skiffs lying 
by to catch a rock from our steamer's swell ; the many land- 
ings at handsome wharf boats, where crowds of people were 
gathered, and women old and grave, or young and laughing, 
peddled raspberries large, red, and pulpy, strawberries huge and 
luscious, or small, wild, and spicy ; venders of bread and of cakes, 
and of fish and of bottles of fresh milk for our third-class passen- 
gers ; and pretty roguish girls ready to swear a bottle of sour milk 
was genuine tartar koumiss; men and women in oddest dress; 
old women with sandals like baskets and blanket-wrapped legs as 
large and shapeless as mill posts ; well dressed men and commonly 
dressed men, all in top-boots wonderfully wrinkled about the 
ankles, and many of them with heels so high that the wearers 
seemed to be standing upon tiptoe ; Tartars with shaven heads 
and beautiful Astrakhan brimless caps, and Tartar women with 
mantles drawn closely about the face ; droskies ready to take one 
for a drive behind tough, fine horses at 20 cents an hour; news- 
paper-sellers with a dozen papers, their full stock in trade, and 
glad to sell a dozen a day ; — all of these things made the run from 
Astrakhan to Nijni-Novgorod extremely pleasant. It is true we 
were a whole week on the water, exclusive of the days we halted 
at cities. I came up the river to write, and found it difficult to 
go within my room and to my pencil. We saw to-day a beautiful 
stern-wheeler, so like home, of a line running yet 500 miles higher 
up the river above Nijni, that we have made up our minds to 
try it. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

FROM NIJNI TO RYBINSK BY RIVER— THEN BY RAIL TO ST. 

PETERSBURG— PETERHOF, ITS BEAUTIFUL FOUNTAINS— 

THE MEETING OF THE EMPERORS. 

St. Petersburg, Jjtfy 21, 1888. 

I SAID that a river had a species of individualism which wins 
and returns a sort of sympathy, and sometimes a friendsliip. The 
Volga to a marked degree has this characteristic. As the child is 
father to the man, so is the earlier and infant portion of this river 
father to the mighty stream it so rapidly becomes. With a total 
length of 2,320 miles, it is navigable for 2,160 odd by steamer, 
and for 1,524 miles floats great double deckers and bears upon its 
bosom a vast commerce. In its smaller upper stream it is no- 
where a turbulent and boisterous torrent. Drawing rich and 
copious aliment from the oozy flats among the low Valdai hills and 
the spongy plains about them, it quickly becomes a dignified 
stream. Its reddish-dark water, though clear in a glass, yet 
almost black when there is a small depth, gives it an appearance 
of deepness even among its boggy sources. It is fed by many 
respectable afifluents. While it is nowhere turbulent, it does not 
at any point lie in stagnant pools, and very rarely can be called 
sluggish. In its upper 150 odd miles, where steamboats do not 
ply, I am told small keels and flats can be floated, and afford con- 
siderable traffic, and little rafts come out to make up the great 
floating islands of wood, which descend toward the sea, and make 
lumber comparatively cheap in the vast steppes of the south. 
Throughout its entire length the traveller feels safe upon its 
bosom. There are no treacherous, shifting bars and rapidly 
changing currents ; no cry of boatmen heaving the lead, or with 
poles taking soundings, telling the half-asleep voyager that he 
may prepare for a bump. Nowhere does the steamer forward and 
back, feeling for a safe channel. Nowhere are there formidable 
rocks and precipices threatening to topple down, or dark and 
dreary swamps breeding mosquitoes and noxious vapors. Every- 
where this great river seems the friend of man. He crowds its 
banks in over 1,000 cities, towns, and villages. Back from its 
borders one can see in the rising, rolling plains hundreds of other 
villages more or less dependent upon this mighty river for food 
and aid. So redundant is the population above Nijni-Novgorod 

443 



444 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

that at points the villages along the shores seem almost to run 
into each other for miles and miles, and lying back are so frequent 
that I counted at one time 15 large ones in sight and often six or 
eight. Fishermen are always in sight ; fishermen with long nets 
worked from boats, and fishermen catching a meal with rod and 
line. I frequently watched the latter and saw many a silvery 
side glistening in the sun or bright in the twilight as the sportsman 
would throw the fluttering sufferer through the inhospitable air. 

What a cruel monster is man ! We descant on the savagery of 
the tiger, the cruelty of the cat. Yet what do these brutes half 
so cruel as the angler does every time he impales the worm upon 
the hook, or leaves the shining victim to dry to death on shore, 
or to suffocate in insufificient water? We eat tender veal, never 
thinking of the cruelty meted out to each little animal, tied by its 
feet and thrown upon carts, cars, and steamboat, and trundled 
often very many miles in horrible agony. The whole habit of the 
common fowl shows that they are fashioned to carry the head 
erect, and yet we carry them for hours head downward with the 
feet tied so tight as to prevent all circulation in them, forcing the 
blood into the head. Man is the world's huge butcher ; the 
only one of God's creatures which kills for the mere love of 
slaying. If his victims could only write his character, he would be 
depicted as the most horrible of all monsters, and yet in his van- 
ity he claims to be made in God's image, and in his egotism 
writes ethics and sings pseans in praise of his own godlike nature. 
The fishes in the depth of the sea, and the worms in the bowels 
of the earth have no conception of man's existence. Perhaps 
there are, floating in and peopling the pure, ethereal realms sur- 
rounding us, beings of such transcendental natures that we, like 
blind worms, see them not. If so, what countless volumes must 
fill their aerific libraries, and what vast pictures must adorn their 
transparent walls, descriptive of man's inhumanity to man and of 
his savage, wanton cruelty to all of earth's sentient creatures ! 
We are amused by the colonies of pariah-dogs of Cairo and Con- 
stantinople, fighting to prevent or punish encroachments on each 
other's borderlines. How our aerial neighbors must smile when 
they look down upon the million of armed men marching and 
counter-marching, filling steamboats and railway trains, to pre- 
vent some little encroachment upon the borderlines of Austria, 
Germany, Roumania, and Russia ! We boast of our own far- 
reaching brains, of our freeborn souls and our liberty-loving 
hearts; and yet, because two kings, one an untried young man, 
and the other a man of no great force, are meeting out upon the 
sea and hobnobbing — smiling instead of growling at each other, 
— the money of Russia goes up ten per cent, in its purchasing 
value. Bah ! Man is not only a cruel brute, but he is a foolish 
one. But a little fish has led me into an odd digression. 

Many of the river steamers are modelled after those of America, 
one line using stern-wheelers. Below Nijni-Novgorod all seem to 



STEAMERS USE NAPHTHA FOR FUEL. 445 

use refuse petroleum for fuel ; above, some use wood ; coal I did 
not see on the entire river. Petroleum is burned by throwing a 
jet of steam through a small stream of oil, thus breaking it into 
spray. The jets for steam and oil are in the immediate front 
edge of the fire-box. A fireman controls his fire by tapping with 
a small mallet or gavel the faucet controlling the flow, often tap- 
ping it so lightly that he moves it almost imperceptibly. Through 
a small window in the casing of the boiler, he watches to see if 
there be any smoke issuing from the flues, his object being to 
consume all so as to make no smoke. The boiler-room is clean 
and neat. The fire roars intensely and with great heat. The oil 
is held in tanks containing fron 10 to 16 tons. Oil-barges over 
100 feet long are at the piers of each steamboat line, and the oil 
is fed into the tanks by a hose. The barges carry huge cisterns 
in their holds containing many thousand puds. At various points 
along the river are huge oil-tanks resembling gas-holders, each 
holding perhaps 1,000 tons. These are upon high banks, and oil 
is pumped into them from the river barges, and fed from them 
into railroad cisterns or other land conveyances. At one town I 
counted 39 of these great tanks. They belonged to several of the 
great Baku refining companies. Kerosene is sent all over the 
land where reached by rail in cisterns, and not in barrels. At 
Kazan the best kerosene costs but seven or eight cents a gallon. 
One result of this cheap burning fluid is that at night towns along 
the river look as if illuminated for some gala occasion, the houses 
being so universally and brilliantly lighted. 

From Nijni-Novgorod to Rybinsk, 306 miles, we came on the 
Alabama, stern-wheeler — slow, but comfortable. We did not 
object to the want of speed, for the trip was enjoyable and very 
pleasing. There were none of the high mountains nor steep 
cliffs which are occasionally seen on the lower river, and which, at 
a few points, give a scenery bordering upon the grand, but there 
were high hills and all was home-like, of Russian, not of English 
or American stamp, for there were no farm-houses or country 
villas, but a succession of villages — often nearly continuous. The 
immediate banks being low, we could look over long reaches of 
rising ground, with waving fields and meadows, the latter now gay 
with the variegated costume of the peasants, red predominating ; 
villages nestled everywhere ; copses of wood, now and then good- 
sized forests, and back of all, from 6 to 15 miles away, the sum- 
mit of uplands crowned by wood, village, and church domes. 
Many of the villages are dominated by large domed and belfried 
sacred edifices ; some of the domes gilded, but generally green or 
blue, and here and there the latter bespangled with gilded stars. 
We passed some large factories, which, after twilight, were bril- 
liant with Edison's electric lights. The most picturesque objects, 
however, were the great monasteries — vast piles with splendid 
churches, domes gilded or of azure blue, turrets and colonnaded 
cloisters, covering many acres, generally on commanding points, 



446 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

or on promontories projecting out into the placid stream. These 
monasteries are very rich, and are surrounded or backed by great 
domains in field and meadow, with comfortable villages half hid- 
den in wooded copse. The monasteries are so large and rich in 
appearance that they give to the upper Volga a scenic effect 
delicious and pleasing. 

The villages, from our steamer, looked comfortable, houses of 
wood — many of the pretty log style — with steep roof of thatch, 
kept in place .by poles. Windmills are abundant, lo to 15 often 
close together, throwing their weird wings in rounded circles 
above the low cottages ; then over the back country and cutting 
the horizon on the distant upland, these spectral-winged monsters, 
whirling in the lessening twilight, add greatly to the pleasing 
picture. No paint gives garish white or tawdry coloring to the 
villages, but all is sesthetic and soft, the weather alone softening 
all down into delicious harmony. Herds of cattle here, as indeed, 
all along the river, are bathing in the hot noon. 

Several of the cities are very picturesque from the river. 
Yaroslav and Kastroma we had time to drive into. In the 
former, which has a population of only about 28,000, there are 73 
churches. It was once the capital of a free province, as Kastroma 
for a few years was of all Russia. In the latter there is a mon- 
astery nearly 1,000 years old, with a quaint old church, and with- 
in its walls the little house in which Michael, the first of the 
Romanoffs, lived as a refugee before the crown was tendered him. 
His house is a little bijou affair, preserved religiously as he left it. 
The monks show with great pride many of the czar's relics, rich 
vestments in brocade and pearls, and goblets of solid gold. The 
wealth of the churches and of the monasteries of Russia is vast ; 
some say it would go a long way in paying off the country's debt. 
It would take, however, many tons of gold and silver, and bushels 
of pearls and precious stones to pay off a debt of $2,500,000,000. 

At Rybinsk we took rail, ran through a low country of bog and 
partially cultivated lands, with great woods of birch and pine. It 
being Sunday, we saw hundreds of peasants at the stations — come 
to see the railroad train, the women probably to look with round- 
eyed pleasure at the well dressed lady passengers, who promenade 
the platforms when the trains stop for a few moments. The 
peasants seemed poor, but not discontented. We saw hundreds 
when driving in the outskirts of Rybinsk coming into town for 
the holiday. The women all were barefooted with their Sunday 
shoes over their shoulders, to be donned before entering the 
crowded streets. Nature patches up the soles of their feet, but a 
cobbler alone can fix those of their shoes. The every-day shoe of 
the peasant is a sandal of plaited bark : but it seems, from what 
we can see, that the man treats himself to a pair of boots long 
before he gives leather to his wife. Throughout Russia high top- 
boots are almost universal. Ofificers and upper classes all wear 



THE CZAR AN AUTOCRATIC FATHER. 447 

them, and only the middle-class city man is shod in shoes. The 
laborers, when sufficiently well off to drop the sandal, take to boots, 
never to shoes. The boots are all of varnished tops and made 
so as to wrinkle closely about the ankles, and are washed when 
soiled. Boots and shoes are made of uncolored leather, and when 
finished are varnished black. High heels are foolishly affected — 
so high that many in walking seem to suffer from corns, and often 
the well dressed lady minces along in a very ungraceful gait. 

The country after striking the great Nicholas railroad from 
Moscow continued low, except through the Valdai Hills, which 
rise to 600 and 800 feet. Thence to St. Petersburg this great 
trunk line traverses a wooded country with a cold, thin soil only 
partially cultivated. The road was not laid out for local traffic, 
but as a military highway between the two capitals. The cele- 
brated order of Czar Nicholas, who, when asked how he wished 
the road to run, replied by taking a ruler and drawing a straight 
line, bears repetition here. The track is as nearly a bee line, as 
possible, and is gratefully so to travellers, for the trains glide along 
it almost without any jar or even crepitation. I do not recall any 
road which seems as smooth. 

We have now been in St. Petersburg six days, doing the capital 
at our leisure, and enjoying an almost continued day, for at 
II o'clock one can read by the twilight, and a broad dawn 
covers a quarter of the northern hemisphere at midnight. Thurs- 
day, the 19th of July, we visited Peterhof, about 20 miles from 
the city, seeing the great imperial residence, and at the same time 
witnessing the meeting and landing of the emperors of Russia and 
Germany. For a week or two the London Times and other 
western papers have been talking of the meeting of these two 
rulers, yet not until four days ago was it even alluded to by the 
St. Petersburg papers, and then only meagrely. It would be 
amusing if it were not distressing to see how the people of this 
capital have to go to papers published so far away for information 
as to what passes or will pass directly under their noses. For ex- 
ample, I noticed a strong platform being built around the Alexan- 
der monument in front of the Winter Palace. I inquired, but 
could not learn, its purpose. To-day I learn its object from the 
London Times of three days ago. The government does not appear 
to think the people have any interest in its doings. Ukases are 
published, but not discussed beforehand. The publication is the 
first information the general public has that a law is even thought of. 
Gen. Annenkoff lately finished the Transcaspian railroad to Sam- 
arcand. Russians with whom we have travelled told us they ex- 
pected him now to become one of the big men of the country, but 
how they had no idea. Two days ago it was announced by the 
Times he had been given the diamond order of Alexander 
Novsky, the highest in the land. The public did not know what 
the proceedings at Kronstadt and Peterhof connected with the 



448 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

meeting of the emperors were to be until the day before they took 
place. The emperor is the father of his people and presumesthey 
will be satisfied with whatever he in his parental love will do for 
their good ; and so far I have not been able to discover that his 
children are not satisfied with this order of doing. They never 
discuss politics, at least with foreigners, except as to the relations 
of Russia with foreign lands. Then there is not much reticence. 
I have not seen one intelligent man who does not declare that a 
free outlet into the Mediterranean is a political necessity, and that 
they want and must have unrestricted trade with all of Asia. 
They say they do not want India, but they desire free roads and 
free commerce with that land, and they have a general impression 
that English rule in India is galling upon the natives. 

Peterhof is the residence of the czar. He occupies the palaces 
in the capital only for short periods each year during the gayeties 
of the winter season. His so-called country residence is a pretty 
though not grand palace. He resides, however, even there in a 
fine villa residence and not in the true Peterhof palace, which 
stands upon an elevation of 70 to 80 feet, overlooking a beautiful 
park of some four or so miles in length along the bay lying 
between the mainland and Kronstadt, five or more miles off. The 
park is broken and not over a third of a mile in width — perhaps 
not over a quarter,— and is finely wooded and prettily laid out 
with drives and gravelled walks. Immediately in front of the 
centre pavilion of the palace an alley is cut through the woods 
down to the beach, here hardly a quarter of a mile off. This alley, 
less than 100 feet wide, is flanked by tall firs, running up in spire 
forms. In the centre of the alley runs a stream or canal of water 
confined between granite walls, and not over 60 feet in width, 
leading down to the beach, spanned by three pretty bridges, and 
ending upon a small walled-in harbor, with pretty landing 
pavilion, from which the royal household takes the imperial yacht 
when it goes upon the water. Immediately under the palace the 
head of the alley spreads to 200 feet, after having dropped from the 
terrace on which the building stands, down to the canal or stream 
below. This descent is fashioned into a beautiful system of 
marble steps, with waterfalls, fountains, and jets supported by 30 
or more statues of life-size in burnished gilt and supporting jets 
d'eau. The statues are in double rows, the two inner ones in a 
line with the walls of the stream leading down to the sea-shore. 
At the foot of the terrace is a large circular basin, 50 to lOO feet 
in diameter, with a gilt statue of several times life-size, holding a 
dolphin, whose mouth is a jet throwing up a stream of 80 feet, 
and surrounded with many smaller jets. Along the walls of the 
canal which runs seaward are rows of fountains with lofty jets 
throwing 50 feet high, mingling their sprays with the branches of 
the fir trees. Flanking the large fountain at the foot of the 
terrace are two other fountains of very large size, with beautiful 



THE BEAUTY OF PETER HOP. 449 

sprays, and below them two marble houses 30 feet high, with 
gilded domes and fan-like fountains pouring over their golden 
sloping roofs. Altogether there are more than 100 fountains or 
jets immediately in view from the terrace above. The great one, 
called " The Samson," throws its water 80 feet up ; and 30 more 
spout in spreading spray about 50 feet; the others from 10 to 20 — 
the majority of them vertically, others at angles. Looking from the 
upper terrace down upon this system of jets d'eau and along the 
marble walks below, filled with brilliantly dressed people, the lofty 
sprays mingling with the foliage of the trees, and the calm sea seen 
silvery in the sunlight through the clean-cut alley, we had a 
picture of surpassing beauty ; or looking up from the lower end 
of the marble canal, through the jets and to the dazzling terrace, 
over the 100 fountains, one could feel as if it were the creation of 
a fairy's wand. The waters at Versailles are larger than these, but 
far less artistic in design. 

This scene we had time to enjoy, and through it was to be con- 
veyed the young Emperor of Germany on his royal visit. It was 
expected the czar would reach this little harbor with his guest at 
three o'clock, and the empress and her suite and many high offi- 
cials, in flashing court uniforms, were in the pavilion at that hour. 
We soon found that there would be some hours to wait. We 
whiled away our time walking about the parks and inspecting the 
long lines of guards and young cadets who lined the drives along 
which the emperors must pass, and in watching the thousands of 
people gathered to do honor to their country's guest. We heard 
German constantly spoken about us, showing that the subjects of 
William II., or the czar's Courlanders, were out in full force. 
Hour after hour passed, and it was about five when we saw in the 
distance, near Kronstadt, a puff of smoke from one of the men- 
of-war drawn up in line. Soon the whole line of ships, stretched 
apparently for miles, was blazing away. We could not hear a 
cannon's report, but we could see the firing. I suspect it gave us 
an idea of what an old-fashioned naval fight in line of battle 
looked like. It was not long before every ship was enveloped in 
sm.oke, and nothing was seen but a thick veil rolling away to the 
southward. Presently my glass showed a steamer with a lofty white 
flag, emerging from the smoke cloud and headed for Peterhof, 
and when I saw the tidy, trim-looking empress standing alone in 
the open hall of the pavilion, with her glass levelled at it, I knew 
she was looking toward her imperial lord. On either side of the 
pavilion on the pier there were long lines of seamen, in clean, 
white uniforms. These began to show a stir, and when the 
steamer was a quarter of a mile off, a couple of cannon were fired 
by them in the regulation salute, and not long after the emperor's 
yacht steamed to the pier. The gang-plank was run out, and the 
burly, towering autocrat of all the Russias mounted it, affection- 
ately embraced his lovely wife, and presented his guest. Having 



450 A RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

witnessed this, we hurried back so as to get a position from which 
we could closely see the two men who wield the destinies of so 
many millions of human beings. There was some shouting, but 
by no means enthusiastic, as the emperor entered the drives lined 
with people. 

First came the imperial open carriage, drawn by four handsome 
black horses. Alexander wore a Prussian helmet, and made no 
acknowledgment of the salute of the people. Politeness accorded 
the reception all to his guest. The Emperor of Germany was 
uncovered, and bowed to the right and left. I was not over ten 
feet away from him as he slowly crossed one of the little bridges, 
and was glad to see a decidedly good-looking, bright face, with a 
pleasant expression, not lacking in intellectual characteristics, 
and withal of much strength. The next carriage held Prince 
Henry and the czarowitz, both in lively and laughing chat. The 
prince was uncovered. I would have known him at once from a 
picture in the Graphic when he was married. The Empress of 
Russia and one lady were also in a four-horse carriage. She was 
cheered with very considerable enthusiasm, and her warm-looking 
face evinced real pleasure at it. While not a beauty, she is de- 
cidedly pretty ; has fine dark eyes, rich complexion, full lips, and, 
I should judge, could love deeply and hate not wisely. Our old 
friend, the Grand Duke Alexis, was alone in his carriage, as hand- 
some as ever, quite gray, and, I learned, a great favorite with the 
people. He is the admiral of the Russian navy. 

I could not help feeling a sort of admiration for the Emperor 
of Germany — admiration for his wonderful position, so young 
and with such power for good or for woe to so many millions. 
As he passed, the thought flashed across my brain : "You look 
strong and brave ; you have in your hands the destiny of Europe 
for years to come. It groans beneath the tramp of millions of 
men, banded and trained to destroy. What will you do with 
them ? Kings have boasted that with a stamp of the foot they 
could set armies in motion and hurl them against the world. Will 
you not invent a new royal boast — the boast that with a stamp of 
your loot you disbanded armies and spread over a suffering world 
a panoply of peace ? So many kings have worn the laurel and the 
oak for wreaths that their leaves are hardly an honor. Cannot 
William of Germany deck his brow with an olive leaf — a unique 
crown for a king? The world has had so many military heroes 
that it has groaned beneath their weight, but so few really wise 
rulers in peace. Can you not be a leader of the few ? " 

Of all the infatuations of mankind, to me the strangest is its 
worship of the soldier and its admiration of bravery. Bravery is 
so common, so animal, and withal almost universal. Europe to- 
day has several millions of soldiers. A coward among them would 
be a rare exception, except in a panic. Few soldiers have the 
courage to show themselves cowards — the moral courage to 



VA AMERIKANETS. 451 

enable them to brave the contempt of their fellows. The com- 
monest one will march up to a cannon's mouth. Not one in a 
thousand would turn and run when the bugle sounds for a 
charge. And yet the world bows before a soldier, and bends the 
neck to the tread of one who happens to be at the head of an 
army when it performs some mighty feat of slaying. 

I could not catch the features of the czar as he passed us. Fie 
was next us, and kept his face too much towards his guest for me 
to see more than a glimpse as the carriage came up. He is very 
tall, and now quite fleshy ; looked, with his epaulets and helmet, 
a giant by the side of the well knit but rather undersized kaiser. 
The drive, along which passed the long line of splendid carriages, 
with coachmen and footmen in cocked hats and covered with gold 
lace and braid, with their occupants, officers in brilliant uniforms, 
was guarded by soldiers, placed apparently less for protection 
than for keeping the foot-people from pressing too close, and a 
part of it being the guard and battalion of young cadets. The 
whole made a handsome picture, especially as the cortege crossed 
the bridge over the canal, along which the white spray of fountains 
was washing the branches of the green trees. Desiring to see the 
czar closely, I walked up to the palace directly after the cortege 
had passed the bridge, while the carriages took a roundabout 
line. An officer was at the steps mounting the terrace at the 
waterfall, and turned all away from it except a few men in uni- 
form and some finely dressed ladies. I touched my hat, saying: 
" Ya Amerikanets " (I am an American), with a gesture showing 
I desired to ascend. Whether he understood my Russian or not 
I do not know. At any rate I mounted, with the conscious 
dignity of being an American sovereign. This declaration of 
mine, " I am an American," has given me many opportunities for 
seeing things denied to others. I shall take out a patent for the 
thing, for it is quite as effective for me here as Paul's declaration, 
Civis sum Romanus, was to him nearly 19 centuries ago. 

To-day the grand military review was held at Krasnoe-Szelo. 
We did not go out, for we would have been kept back with the 
mob, and would have seen but little of real advantage. Yester- 
day I was told, by one who ought to know, that a drive, expected 
to be taken by the czar and emperor, was changed because of 
some Nihilistic rumors in the air. Big men here are quite as 
easily scared by rumors of this sort as they are in Chicago, where 
anarchist ghosts are constantly bobbing up before some people's 
visions. This afternoon the great street, Nevsky Prospekt, was 
lined with people who expected the emperor to pass. The 
crowd waited long, and finally, nearly three hours after they were 
expected, and during which time one half of the driveway was 
kept clear by the police, an open carriage, followed by three or 
four others, came along in a brisk trot. Emperor William and 
Prince Henry were in the front, and bowed their salutations to the 



452 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

people. But the czar was not there. Was it " etiquette " which 
prevented him from accompanying his imperial guest on his drive 
to see the city, or was there some truth as to the Nihilistic rumor? 
I felt a satisfaction in the fact that the German was not afraid to 
go where he was announced, even if his host was less willing to 
trust his subjects. 

The czar occasionally, but rarely, drives through the streets, 
going to a church, or for some other purpose, but it is never 
known in advance what way he is going. The villainous murder 
of his kind father, the best friend that liberty had had in Russia, 
is enough to make the son feel somewhat anxious, but I doubt if 
he be wise in holding himself so aloof from the people as he does. 
A -king wins confidence by showing it himself. There may be 
madmen who would attempt to repeat the cruel act which took 
Alexander II. off, but such madmen are, however, best disarmed 
by being ever watchful and on the alert, and, at the same time, 
showing them that they are not feared. The assassin is a 
coward at heart. To avoid him helps to make him less a coward. 
A bold, fearless front makes him more and more a coward. I 
lifted my hat with a feeling of increased respect for the brave and 
cheery-looking young German Emperor when he drove by me this 
afternoon, with no apparent guard other than the good-will and 
hospitality of his entertainers. The people of this country have 
already received from him large benefits. Every dollar's worth 
of goods exported from Russia brings back ten per cent, more of 
return than it did a few weeks ago, before he announced his visit 
to the czar. Five weeks ago I received for my English sove- 
reigns i\^ roubles ; last week I could only get io|-. The trusting 
act of William in driving unattended through the streets of this 
great capital called forth many kindly expressions from its people, 
and he received evidence of their respect in a generous cheering 
and universal removal of hats. 

What may be the political effect of his visit time alone will tell. 
Wise newspaper men abroad are giving out their learned opinions 
in tones worthy of Malvolio. They say it means nothing, but I, 
who am rather an optimist in political matters, prophesy that 
good, very decided good, will grow out of it. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

ST. PETERSBURG— POLITENESS AND GOOD NATURE OF THE RUS- 
SIANS—SUPERB GALLERIES— HERMITAGE— WINTER PALACE 
—WINTER REVELRY— ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH— ILLUMI- 
NATION AT PETERHOF. 

Wiborg, Finland, July 26, 1888. 

I HAVE always had a vague impression that Peter the Great was 
somewhat daft — that he was a sort of a lunatic bear, who ima- 
gined he could create a mighty empire and rule it from his ice-cave 
home up near the polar sea. His odd sayings and odder doings, 
read of when I was a boy, gave me this impression ; and nothing 
was more conducive to the formation of the idea than his deter- 
mination to build a mighty and permanent city on the quagmire 
at the head of the Gulf of Finland, where every thing was frozen 
up for nearly nine months of the year, and where, during the next 
three, an outraged sun hatched mosquitoes into fierce beasts of 
prey. But since I have seen St. Petersburg, and have been an 
eye-witness of its grandeur, and have seen so much of the vast 
country of which it is the capital, I have been more than ever con- 
firmed in another of my theories — that lunacy and genius are, if 
not one and the same, at least twin brothers. Men are in the 
habit of saying that to the eye of genius things unfold themselves 
with crystal clearness, while to the ordinary mind they are cloudy, 
if not muddy. I, however, have an idea that one-eyed genius 
sees the things which throb in the brain behind, and, lacking the 
lights of judgment, is not turned to the right or the left by those 
arguments of reason, which hold other and more rounded brains 
bridled and in check. The poet utters the thought which burns 
in his frenzied brain. His words are deep chiselled into marble, and 
ring throughout all time. The same thought has run through 
a thousand steadier brains, but judgment whispered : " This 
is fustian, sound, and fury," and the thought was not formulated 
into words ; but when these same steadier brains afterwards heard 
it from the poet's lips, it comes home to them and awakens echoes 
in the soul, and they bow down before the genius who uttered in 
madness what they themselves have a thousand times felt but 
dared not clothe in words. Lear and Hamlet were madmen, but 
Shakespeare — Ignatius says Bacon — gave words to their mad- 
dened thoughts, and sent them seething down into the souls 
of millions of calmer men, who recognized them as echoes of their 

453 



454 A RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

own moments of agony and sorrow. They, however, suffer and 
are silent. It was Voltaire, I think, who gave nearly the same 
idea when he said : " Le genie — c'est I'audace." Madman or 
genius, Peter drove a pile down into the quivering bog on the 
banks of the Neva, and swore that on it he would build a " house 
with a window through which he could look out into Europe." 
His counsellors dared not expostulate, for it was a dangerous 
thing to thwart the will of the autocrat. What is, is right. The 
steadfast rock gathers moss, and around its base nature heaps up 
sands. Indomitable will and despotic force laid the foundations 
of this city ; the people, but earthworms, bored about among the 
rocks and cut them into shifting sands, which grew and grew 
about Peter's cottage. They dug canals, which unite the Neva 
through the Volga with the White Sea of the north and the far- 
off Caspian of the south, and married these distant waters to the 
Baltic of the west. And St. Petersburg, the creation of mad 
Peter's will, calm, dignified, and grand in the twilight dawn of a 
summer's midnight ; brilliant and dazzling in the snows and burn- 
ing lights of the long, gay nights of winter ; with its palaces in 
majestic piles, and temples and churches with rounded domes cut 
upon the blue sky ; its great factories and business houses ; its 
many river branches and canals, through which clear water pours 
in massive volume and rapid current, lined with granite quays and 
spanned by innumerable bridges; with its broad paved streets, 
along which thousands of vehicles are always rattling ; its wooded 
gardens, filled with beautiful houses and gay pavilions ; its long 
colonnades, its statues, and monuments ; its hundreds of steamers 
darting up and down its many water-ways ; and its thousands of 
barges, loaded with wares of many lands — St. Petersburg sits 
here between Lake Lagoda and Finland's Gulf, apparently so fit- 
tingly placed that the cynical genius of Voltaire would scarcely be 
able to ask, as it did of Berlin : — '* Belle ville, que fais tu la?' 

This cit}'' is generally spoken of as handsome and regularly 
built, with long rows of palatial edifices, handsome in detail, but 
monotonous and lacking picturesqueness, because of the regu- 
larity. This is an unjust criticism. There is nothing of the 
quaintness seen in the old German towns, with which, I suspect, 
travellers have in their minds made comparisons. There is, however, 
much which is picturesque, but all in modern style. Along the 
Neva the great size of the public edifices so arrests attention that 
one is apt to dwell too long upon the single structure. A coup 
d'ceil, however, gives much of variety, and brings out much for 
relief in the different styles of architecture ; and the various tint- 
ings, all neutral, are very restful to the eye. Everywhere there 
is a general air of strength and dignity, and along the quay for a 
mile or more the picture is one of imperial grandeur and magnifi- 
cence. A topographical outline of the city will probably not be 
out of place. 



OUTLINE OF ST. PETERSBURG. 455 

The river Neva, rising in Ladoga, the largest of European 
lakes, flows southwesterly and then northwesterly, striking St. 
Petersburg about 40 miles from the lake. It then bends due 
north for a mile or so, and making a short curve, runs due west 
for another mile, when it separates into two branches, one flowing 
southwesterly, the other north and then westerly, into the bay, 
two miles and two and a half miles respectively from the point 
of separation. The points where these two branches strike the 
sea are about two and a half or three miles apart. South of the 
main river and the southerly branch lies the bulk of the city, with 
the palaces and the finest of the public edifices. Between these 
two branches, and springing out of them are several other 
branches, some broad and deep, also emptying into the bay, 
and forming five or six great islands, varying in size from 200 
acres up to perhaps 1,000, and one much more. The three 
main streams vary in width from, say 800 to 1,500 feet. 
These islands are cut by small running canals into many smaller 
islands. The more northerly ones are covered with villas and 
wooded gardens, and one or two of them with parks of considerable 
size, over which run fine gravel roads, along which rural-looking 
villas are prettily dotted. Through the main city, which lies 
south of the river, run three or four deep canals of 100 or 
so feet in width and spanned by many handsome bridges at 
streets intersecting. These canals, as well as those on the islands, 
bend about in wanton manner. On them run small steamers or 
steam barges, carrying passengers at a cent a mile, or less, and 
crowds of large barges, loaded with every character of freight, and 
carrying it almost to the doors of the warehouses. I say almost, 
for streets run along the canals on both sides, and of greater or 
less width. All of the river branches have rapid, and the canals 
fair currents of dark bog water — of water colored by pine lands 
and swamps, not pure enough for potable purposes, but consid- 
ered sufficiently so for bath-houses, many of which float on the 
main branches and on the canals of the islands, and quite a num- 
ber on the canals which intersect the main city. The water of 
the main branches is drunk. The city, hswever, is provided with 
drinking-water from above the town, and the streets are sprinkled 
by movable hose directly from the street hydrants, which throw 
with a strong head. 

All streets are paved, mostly with small cobble, kept in con- 
stant repair, and drained by an underground S3^stem of sewer- 
age. The more prominent streets are partially paved with 
wooden blocks — that is, with a band or bands 15 to 20 feet of 
blocking, the remainder on either side with cobble. . Nevsky 
Prospekt, one of the great streets, and the most prominent oac 
for retail business purposes, has a roadway of 90 feet divided! 
into five narrower ways; the outer ones cobbled, then two of 
blocks, and the middle, in which the tramway runs^ eabbled*. 



456 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

The blocks are laid together closely in exact hexagons, upon two- 
by eight-inch boards, tarred and laid an inch apart, spiked 
strongly to six by eight sills solidly bedded into the soil below, 
the whole drained by lines of eight by ten troughs, leading into 
man-holes. The cobbles are fitted closely together, and then the 
interstices are filled with very small broken granite, and with 
sand thrown an inch deep over all. The tramway or street-car 
rails are grooved, with the bearing flange an inch and a half 
wide ; the inner flange, about a half inch wide, and laid absolutely 
flush with the pavement. This is a cold climate with long winters 
and deep snows, and I am told there is no difficulty in keeping 
the grooves clear, and I know that carriages pass across the rails 
at all sorts of diagonals without any difficulty or unpleasant jerk- 
ing. American cities should force street-car companies to use 
the groove rail. It would save a great amount of damage to the 
running gear of wagons, and would enable light vehicles to cross 
safely and without wrenching wheels. The horse-cars on two of 
the tramway lines connect quite in the thick of the town with 
cars propelled by steam. They are heated by coke, and are 
as noiseless as the horse-cars, and do not frighten horses in the 
least. 

Street gutters and sewer openings are so located that street 
intersections are flush with the sidewalks. Street-repairers are 
constantly at work. The authorities understand that a stitch in 
time saves nine, and that the excellence of a street is not in hav- 
ing it well built first so much as keeping it in thorough repair 
afterward. 

St. Petersburg has a population of 950,000. We were told by 
some of its citizens, whom we met at various points before reach- 
ing it, that every one was out of town during the summer; that 
we would find the heat oppressive, the dust bad, the mosquitoes 
intolerable, and the flies a nuisance ; but that in the winter it was 
glorious, a sort of paradise in snow, where the people have a con- 
tinuous carnival on ice. Judging by what we saw of things con- 
nected with winter, there must be every concomitant necessary 
to make it joyous. The houses are well built, with thick walls, 
and everywhere double windows hung permanently and fitting 
closely. The sleighs are pretty and in great varieties. The 
horses are tough, well-formed, sufficiently speedy, and of wonder- 
fully good tempers. Hot-houses have been brought to perfection, 
and one now sees in windows melons so sweet that one almost 
imagines that they convey their odor through the sense of sight ; 
grapes, peaches, and flowers, palms, and ferns, of rare perfection. 
And in winter, I am told, there is a vast profusion of hot-house 
plants. The summers are so short that out-door flowers are not 
at all relied on, but hot-hou.ses are abundant and finely managed. 

Willie has been in a state of desperation throughout our long 
journeyings in Russia because he had not seen over two or three 



THE RUSSIAN A POLITE MAN. 457 

very pretty women, and very few who were not positively homely. 
But from his frequent ejaculations as we walked the streets or 
mingled with the crowds in and about St. Petersburg, such as 
"Ah, there!" Ah, there! my beauty," " Ah, there ! my size," I 
have come to the conclusion that the czar has attracted nearly all 
of Russia's beauty to the capital. Willie tells me that there are 
as many pretty women in it as he has seen anywhere, except at 
Buda-Pesth. The men are generally polite and pleasant. They 
lack etiquette ; but of that politeness which has its origin in the 
heart they have a great deal. One form of etiquette is through- 
out Russia absolutely universal. A man never enters a house 
(except a station) without removing his hat. This habit may 
perhaps have grown out of the fact that every house — indeed, 
almost every room and shop — has its " Ikon," or holy image. 
Men uncover on entering a room, taking it for granted that they 
go into the presence of a sacred emblem. This is done in the 
post-office, in the vestibule of galleries and court-houses, in the 
commonest butcher shop, in the little store-room where the attend- 
ant, perhaps a little girl, could carry off all her goods in a half- 
dozen half-bushel baskets. Men, too, lift their hats to each other 
very sedulously. I have seen pilgrims in dirty rags with tattered 
sandals, knapsack and rough staff, accost each other on a 
thoroughfare by first removing, in studied form, their filthy looking 
sheepskin caps. 

All smoke cigarettes, and delight to hold a gallon of carbon in 
their lungs and then roll it out like steam from a 'scape-pipe. In 
southern Russia and the Caucasus the women — matrons, and 
even some unmarried ones — smoke almost as universally as do 
the men. I have had, two or three times, nicely dressed ladies 
step up to me in a railroad station or on the platform and beg of 
me a light. I suppose this arose from my having a cigar, from 
which a better light could be had than from the cigarette of 
another. In northern Russia and at St. Petersburg I have seen 
but two women with cigarettes, and one of them was a princess. 
I am told comparatively few smoke here. I am glad that villain- 
ous habit, which John Bull is carrying around the world, of ram- 
ming his hand into his pocket for a match when asked for a light, 
instead of handing you his burning cigar, is not in vogue here. 
V/hen I ask for a light I do not ask for a match. I wish that 
which costs the giver nothing, whereas when he goes down into 
his pocket he takes trouble for me, and gives me something of 
fixed value when he hands me a match. There is a sort of good- 
fellowship in the loan of a light. There is a polite insult when 
a man gives you a match, for he virtually says : " I have a good 
cigar, and I do not wish it poisoned by your weed." The use of 
tobacco is at best nasty. There is, however, a sort of free- 
masonry in the mingling of smoke and loaning a " chaw." I 
always liked the feeling which would make a Southern gentleman 



4S8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

take tobacco from an old darkey, who always begs tobacco, even 
when his pocket is full. I have seen a negro pull from his greasy 
pocket a plug and hand it to a gentleman, who would bite off a 
good " chaw," and never insulted his sable friend by picking off 
the outside dirt. A Russian gives and takes a light freely from a 
stump. 

Our journeyings of over 5,500 miles in Russia have been a 
revelation to me in many things. First, as to the capabilities of 
this vast country; the enormous stretches of land whose produc- 
tiveness is unequalled by any other ; the depth of the soil; the 
rich underlying clays in the south and middle provinces, render- 
ing famine-producing drought impossible ; the breadth of the 
wooded districts of the north ; the systems of rivers of deep cur- 
rents and without rapids permeating the whole country in such a 
manner that short canals can connect them and make water 
communication almost continuous from the Arctic Sea to the 
Black, from the Baltic far into the foot-hills of the Ural moun- 
tains. But above all it has been a revelation as to the character- 
istics of the people. I knew, from many I had previously met in 
Continental wanderings, that the upper-class Russian was an 
elegant gentleman, but I thought the middle and lower classes 
were uncouth, rough, ill-tempered, and bordering upon the brutal. 
How different have I found them ! I have mixed with them in 
crowds, when working, when worshipping, when idle and when 
busy, and when drunk; have watched crowds of peasants and 
great gatherings of well-to-do citizens on steamboats, in crowded 
railway stations, and in packed railroad cars, and if asked what 
are the most marked characteristics of the whole people I would 
reply: Amiability and kindliness. They are, moreover, charita- 
ble. I have seen them, again and again, turn back to give in 
small charity to beggars and to needy ones whom they had 
passed unnoticed by the wayside. The importunities of beggars 
do not seem to annoy them, as is the case among most people. 
Too many in our favored land give to the poor and helpless, not 
cheerily and for the sake of helping, but rather to get rid of 
them, and then with an air of one casting a bone to a dog. Men- 
dicants throng the vestibules and entrances to churches here, 
showing that it is of men's piety they ask. With us, and in Eng- 
land, they throng the doors of theatres and other places of 
amusement, as if expecting help from the prodgical and the care- 
less. Perhaps they avoid our churches because the ministers have 
a corner on the charity of the pious. I have been surprised by 
the numbers of all classes who give with kindly air to the poor 
supplicants at church doors, in the towns and cities we have 
visited. One sees evidences of this amiability in many ways ; all 
seem especially kind to children and to animals. 

Birds are almost as gentle here as they are in India, where 
Buddhism has taught that the soul of an ancestor or a relative 



THE RUSSIAN A GOOD-NATURED ANIMAL. 459 

may be in the body of some dumb creature, and where charity to 
the brute is taught as a reHgious duty. Crows hop along the 
road within a few feet of passers-by. Birds of all sorts perch upon 
telegraph wires, and do not fly until the wind made by the train 
ruffles their feathers. Pigeons fly down among drosky-drivers, 
and are frequently so close to me that I try to touch them with 
my cane. Dogs trot the streets with their tails curled over their 
backs, as independent as wood-sawyers, and I am told rarely ever 
fight. I have not seen any thing bordering upon a fight between 
men, and yet I have seen thousands drunk. Give a Russian an 
accordion and he is happy and too good-natured to kill a flea. I 
mentioned these things to a very intelligent gentleman. He 
laughed and said ; " Why, I have been in many lands, and I 
believe we have the most amiable people that exist, and their 
amiability has gone down among all their domestic animals. Our 
men rarely quarrel and never fight ; our dogs don't snarl or bite, 
and our horses won't kick." I rejoined ; " And yet you have 
Nihilists ! " " Ah," he said, " have you not noticed the better the 
woman the worse she becomes when she falls? Your amiable 
man, when he turns lunatic, is your fiercest man. In old Greece 
there was a sect of philosophers who proved by arguments, to 
their own satisfaction at least, that there was no such thing as 
material existence ; that all materialism was but the figment of 
the imagination. Our scholastic students have reasoned them- 
selves into the belief of Nihilism. They are philosophic mad- 
men." "And like every other disease it must run its course until 
thrown off by a better growth," I added. " I am afraid so," he 
rejoined, with a sigh. The love of flowers seems universal here. 
It pervades all classes throughout the entire country we have 
passed. In cities, towns, and villages, dwelling-house windows 
are filled with flowers — in first and second stories, — and often so 
full that they look like conservatories, and at every country station 
children sell wild flowers. 

I said something about dogs. That reminds me that we have 
seen in all parts of Russia so far visited, dogs of all breeds, and 
apparently pure. Setters and pointers of beautiful make, mon- 
ster St. Bernards, and spaniels, and poodles, greyhounds and 
pugs, turnspits, shaggy dogs, and smooth-haired dogs, all 
well kept and on most kindly footing with the people. The 
kindliness to the brute creation seems to have been acquired 
by the close relations, long-continued, of the Russians with their 
Asiatic neighbors. This brings me back to another Oriental 
peculiarity of these people. That is the disposition of merchants 
to congregate in great bazaars. Every city has its one or more 
large establishment of this kind ; many of them being ele- 
gant, and all picturesque. In them every character of mer- 
chandise can be bought, from a baby doll up to a threshing- 
machine, and in all, goods are displayed in Oriental colorings^ 



46o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Several of the bazaars of St. Petersburg are monster affairs and 
built with an eye to architectural beauty. On Nevsky Pros- 
pekt is one with a front of 700 feet by a depth of over 1,400 
on the two cross, and backing on a rear street. It is two stories 
high, with a central and two end pavilions on each street, and a 
handsome columned portico in front of each central pavilion, and 
arched two-story colonnades on the four fronts. It is divided 
into a great number of small shops on the first story, and into 
store-rooms above and store-houses in the rear. Close to this are 
several others, nearly as large, with ornamental fixed iron awnings 
over the sidewalks. The ground of the principal one belongs to 
the city, the others to wealthy noblemen. The ground owners 
built the houses on fixed and fine plans, and then sold the houses 
to individual proprietors, reserving an annual leasehold rental. 
There has been a general disposition throughout the city to build 
in great blocks and divide them up for the several business pur- 
poses, thus giving it a stately and imperial appearance. There 
are: no open store fronts, as in America. This makes the blocks 
appear more like palaces. The hotel we stopped in, on the cor- 
ner of Nevsky Prospekt, and near the handsome Michael Palace, 
is a splendid four-story edifice, with a frontal of 636 feet. With 
the exception of a few of the great public buildings, and one or 
two churches, all structures, public and private, are of brick plas- 
tered in Portland cement ; some are white, but the majority are 
yellowish-brown, salmon, peach-blow, and other delicate neutral 
tints ; blue and green being, I think, entirely avoided. The public 
edifices, palaces, admiralty, etc., along the quay cover a length of 
about a mile, and, together with others behind them, a depth of 
perhaps a quarter of a mile. Besides these there are many other 
state structures and palaces scattered throughout the city on both 
banks of the river. The imperial palaces are not used as such 
now, but are devoted to galleries, museums, schools of art, acad- 
emies of science, engineering, etc. They are generally of great 
size, three or four stories high, and of elegant though not elabo- 
rate architectural design. 

The museums and art collections are rich in their contents, and 
of vast value both to the student and to the amateur. One can 
with profit spend days and days in the " Hermitage." The col- 
lections of coins are unequalled elsewhere. Case after case of 
antique seals and exquisitely cut stones and cameos are bewilder- 
ing, nearly all with fine impressions in wax or plaster, showing 
the delicate design and artistic finish. Room after room, and 
some of great size, are filled with statuary, antique and modern, 
and many of them of highest merit, and vast numbers of Etrus- 
can vases. Grand halls, lofty and perfectly lighted, have on their 
walls nearly 2,000 pictures, all good and many of them chefs- 
d'oeiivre. Two or three hundred of them are masterpieces of 
Raphael, Correggio, Domenichino, Leonardo da Vinci, Carlo Dolce, 



WONDERS OF ART. 461 

Guido, Van Dyck, Teniers, Ruysdael, Rembrandt, and other 
great painters, but above all of Murillo. I have never seen so 
many works together of this, to me, unapproachable master. 
There are a few fine ones scattered in different European collec- 
tions, which had caused me to admire him even above Raphael, 
But here there are about 20, all in one room, in admirable light, 
and three or four of them of grandest character. There is a rich- 
ness of tone, borrowed, I suppose, from Moorish blood, in his 
pictures shown by no other artist. Raphael's Madonnas are too 
pure for motherhood. They are artless girls who never dreamed 
of guile and were never touched by a human passion. They 
nurse the Christ-child as an angel who never touched earth would 
fondle a pure scintillation. But Murillo's Mary is a woman 
with a woman's heart, overflowing with love, full of unborn pas- 
sion, a passion that might have been fearfully tempted had not 
the all-seeing eye watched over it, and the whispered counsels of 
invisible angels directed and angels' hands guided it into paths of 
celestial purity. Murillo's Mother of God was a woman who 
gave to her child the human passions which enabled him to feel 
for the woes of man, and to sympathize with him in his human 
struggles ; gave to him a humanity which made him bear his 
cross in agony, and to sweat great drops of blood, and to cry out 
in human woe as he gave up the ghost. The heart-strings of 
Raphael's Mary would have snapped at the sight of intense suf- 
fering ; but Murillo's Mary suffered and bore as only a woman 
can suffer and bear, and when the moment of sublimation came, 
she ascended into heaven, still a woman, but a woman turned into 
a saint and borne upon angels' wings, fanned and elevated by the 
breath of God toward her eternal throne. Close together here 
one can gaze for hours on his two masterpieces, inferior to those 
of no artist, and equalled only by Raphael's at Dresden. All the 
schools of art are fully represented in this noble gallery, and most 
masters have in it some of their finest pieces. 

Adjoining and united by an arched gallery to the Hermitage 
is another magnificent structure, the vast Winter Palace, with 
great halls and noble stairways, beautiful marble pillars in great 
profusion, lofty conservatories, and a royal chapel in which rich 
Oriental taste seems to have tried to exhaust itself in heaping up 
gold and jewelled wealth. In this little chapel one has the ex- 
quisite satisfaction of seeing the dried hand and wrist of John 
the Baptist, a picture of the Virgin painted by St. Luke, and a 
piece of the original cross. Luke's colors were not of the fast 
kind, for an eye of faith is required to enjoy the purity of the 
lineaments of his immaculate subject. This palace has brilliant 
specimens of malachite columns and mantels and cabinets, lapis 
lazuli vases, and mosaics unsurpassed except in the Vatican. 
Here, too, is Peter's gallery, with his private cabinets, his lathe 
and working-tools, his diamond snuff-boxes and jewelled swords, 



462 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

his clothes, miniatures, and bric-a-brac. A strange mixture of 
imperial wealth and plodding industry ! One, however, is brought 
nearer to the great Peter in the cottage across the river, in which 
he lived while laying the foundations of the capital. There one 
sees the old imperial carpenter and shipwright in close and familiar 
quarters. I was boy enough to seat myself in a chair of his make 
— a sort of combined seat and writing-desk which he used, and in 
which I doubt not he often took a nap. I know most people 
will say how silly ! But they must know I have adopted as a 
motto: " 'T is folly to be wise." 

One of the very attractive features of the galleries of St. 
Petersburg are the tables, urns, and vases, some of them of great 
size, in jasper, lapis lazuli, and Russia's peculiar marble, the sur- 
prisingly veined and beautifully green malachite. While one 
would not go to a gallery more than once to see these things 
alone, yet they afford cheerful relief when examining the works 
of art hanging on the walls. The Hermitage and the Winter 
Palace each has probably more abundant and larger pieces of 
this wonderful mineral — for it is rather a mineral than a stone — 
than all the rest of the world together outside of this empire. 
The walls of the Winter Palace are adorned by a great number of 
large spirited battle-pieces representing Muscovite fights. Many 
of them are very fine, but the city furnishes so many galleries 
that a stay of months would be required to do them justice. 
The emperor never, I believe, resides in any of these buildings, 
unless for a few days when the great balls are given during the 
long winter months, when his capital is held by a rule of ice and 
two thirds of his huge dominions are wrapped in a mantle of 
snow. Then in this imperial city, as if in mockery of grim 
Boreas, King Carnival mounts his glittering throne, horses 
prance and neigh as if partaking of the general joy, bells 
jingle and sing in a thousand silvery tones, men in gold lace 
and women in embroidered silks, all enveloped in warm mantles 
borrowed from the furry denizens of the frozen regions of the 
far north, flirt and sing, strut and dance, eat and drink in a high 
revelry unknown to, and impossible in lands where winter's sun 
comes forth in warm and genial mood. Here his wintry face is 
never fierce, and after a quick run in the short day he retires 
early to his southern bed and leaves to man a long and weird 
twilight, with streamers in the far north of " the borealis race 
that flit ere you can point their place." Then and in those long 
nights the autocrat comes among his children and gives them 
the light of his imperial face, dearer to courtiers than the glow 
of the king of day ; and noblemen and gentry strive to imitate 
imperial splendor and to squander the treasures gathered from 
their vast country estates. The very poor of the great city 
grow enthusiastic when telling you of the gayeties of winter. 
For it is then that they touch the gold given in free-handed 



WINTER REVELRY. 463 

largesse by the prodigal rich, or carelessly scattered in their 
wild revelry. 

The St. Petersburger asks in a breath of the traveller if he 
has seen the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the statue of 
Peter the Great and St. Isaac's. He is proud of many things 
in the great city, but these he believes unequalled in the world. 
On a massive block of granite, weighing 1,500 tons, cut to re- 
semble a rugged precipice, the czar sits upon a proud charger, 
both of heroic size, and on the brink of the precipice points to 
the glorious work of his brain — the proud city of his dreams, 
and seems to say : " I spake, and behold the creation of my 
voice." He has, to me, the proudest expression I have ever 
seen portrayed in marble, bronze, or living colors. The very 
spirit of the autocrat, who considered obstacles but things to be 
surmounted, and would not learn the meaning of the word fail, 
seems to breathe from the proud face and bold demeanor of the 
pile of bronze hanging over the precipice yawning beneath the 
horse's feet. Other monuments are worthy of note, but I will 
only name one, erected to commemorate a victory over the 
Turks. It is an iron column standing on a lofty pedestal of 
granite, and of nearly 50 feet in height, divided into six stories, 
around which, in diminishing tiers, are arranged over lOO cannon 
taken from the enemy. It is, I think, unique, and is a fitting 
base for the lofty figure of Victory above, holding in one hand a 
wreath in laurel of victory, and an olive branch in the other. 
The olive branch, I suppose, to be handed over only when the 
Mussulman surrenders the Bosphorus to the upholder of the 
Russian cross. 

As I said heretofore, the Russians are preeminently a pious 
people, and take more pride in their churches than in any other 
public structures. St. Petersburg is by no means a city of sacred 
buildings. There are comparatively few, but several of them 
are noble temples. In many respects the Cathedral of the 
Saviour in Moscow is the most beautiful Christian temple I 
have ever seen, but St. Isaac's here is one of the grandest and, 
next to St. Peter's in Rome, is the most impressive and the 
richest of churches. It is in form a. perfect Greek cross, with a 
length of 360 odd feet by 315, built of stone, resting on massive 
granite foundations. Fronting each line of the cross is a noble 
portico, raised on massive blocks of red granite, forming the 
platform from which lift 28 columns, 60 feet high and 7 feet 
in diameter, each a single piece of polished granite with heavy 
bronze bases, and surmounted by florid Corinthian capitals in 
the same metal. These support the upper part of the vast por- 
ticos, in the pediments of which are figures in bronze of great 
size representing different biblical stories. At the four corners 
of the edifice are four cupolas or domes, containing the great 
bells, and relieved by bronze figures of colossal dimensions, but 



464 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

appearing from the ground simply of life-size. Springing from 
the centre between these smaller domes is the great dome or 
cupola of gilded copper, resting on a colonnade of granite col- 
umns 30 feet high. The apex of this dome is nearly 300 feet 
high. From its shoulder springs a smaller cupola or lantern of 
same shape as the main dome. On this rests the great cross at 
an elevation of 366 feet from the street. 

The exterior of St. Isaac's is grand and in such perfect propor- 
tion that one can scarcely realize its great dimensions and lofty 
height. The splendid bronze friezes and statues, its huge granite 
columns of perfect polish, its gilded domes and lofty cross, and 
the granite steps and platform of titanic dimensions^these are 
all very impressive. But it is not until one has passed through 
the great portals of bronze ornamented in alto-relievo and finds 
himself in the dim and awful interior, with its huge pillars, 
oblong in shape and massive in proportion, built of costly marble 
of softest hues, pink and salmon of neutral tone predominating, 
and picked out in bands of black and scrolls of white, and then 
looks up to the huge rounded dome, letting in the sunlight from 
far above — it is not until then that one can realize the perfection 
of form of the vast edifice, or can realize the imperial richness of 
its material. The pillars are all on bases and plinths of polished 
bronze and crowned by capitals in the same rich metal in highest 
Corinthian style ; above and resting on these is an interior cor- 
nice of great depth, whose prominent members are, too, of 
bright bronze. The ikonistas, or screen, separating the main in- 
terior from the inner altar or tabernacle, instead of being light 
and apparently movable, is stable and fixed, of perhaps 100 feet 
in height, ornamented by ten malachite pillars over 30 feet high 
and large and perfect in Corinthian form, surmounted by capitals 
of wonderful work and resting on bases wrought with exquisite 
leaf ornaments. In the centre of the ikonistas is a magnificent 
bronze portal with swinging doors over 20 feet high and made of 
exquisite leaf and vine openwork. Flanking the portal and next 
the malachite columns are two pillars of lapis lazuli, 20 feet high 
and of a marvellous color. Looking from one side, the malachite 
columns seem a solid wall for the great screen. 

St. Isaac's is celebrated, and deservedly so, for its music. The 
reading by the priests is richly intoned, and men with great vol- 
ume of voice are chosen for the role. The responses of the choir 
are very sweet, but in the liturgy the effect is marvellously touch- 
ing. The service is very long on Sunday, lasting from ten to 
nearly one. The floor of the church was crowded, when we were 
present, by thousands of devotees, and either the music or their 
own devotional feelings kept them standing throughout, with no 
appearance of weariness. The fervent devotions of all worship- 
pers appeal strangely to the heart. I have been deeply affected 
in a Buddhist temple. I was held in rapt attention at St. Sophia 



GRAND ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH. 465 

by a Mohammedan priest. Last Sunday at St. Isaac's my heart 
welled up through my eyes. No opera ever appealed to my love 
of beautiful music as did the singing of the choir. Even the 
oratorio of " Moses in Egypt," with Mario and Grisi, Belletti and 
Albani, and several other /rz'w/ in the roles, at Paris when I was a 
young man, failed to impress me as did this Greek church music ! 
I do not wonder it takes such deep hold upon the people whose 
religion seems almost entirely confined to externals. 

Some clouds had hung over the sun for some time during ser- 
vice on Sunday at St. Isaac's, but as the choir sung out its joy 
when the bread and wine were blessed, and the deep, mellow 
tones of the huge bells entered through the lofty dome, mingling 
with the sweet voices of the choristers, I looked up in almost 
startled pleasure. As I did so the cloud rolled by, and the sun 
shot down in bright rays through the far-above windows and sent 
them in hallowed streams into the church below. I could 
then understand the exaltation of devotees when they take for 
miraculous many natural phenomena. The rayons of sunlight 
poured down into the deep dimness of the church, and from them 
spread in mellow mist throughout the glorious edifice ; and 
through the great portal in front of the inner altar streamed a hal- 
lowed effulgence seeming to come from the grand figure of 
Christ which fills, in gorgeous stained glass, the great window at 
the rear. A sigh of deep devotion arose from a thousand men and 
women about me as they bent upon their knees in devout thank- 
fulness. 

Next to the churches, the drosky is the most decidedly Russian 
institution of the land. The one now most in use is a small, open 
caleche with low wheels, the front a half foot narrower in the tred 
than the rear ones, and being often not over 18 inches in diame- 
ter, but generally about two feet. The wheels are strongly built, 
the hinder ones twice or more as high as those in front, with the 
axle-spindle projecting a couple of inches beyond the hub, a pair 
of heavy shafts bowing from the horse's girth and bending in 
close to the withers. From the ends of the shaft lifts a rounded 
bow or yoke some three feet high, firmly fastened to the shafts 
and to the collar or hames. The horse draws directly by the 
shafts and holds back by the same, there being a breeching run- 
ning from the collar on the outer side of the shaft and fastened to 
it ; a strong trace runs back and is attached to the end of the 
axle-spindle outside of the hub. The driver is always a chubby- 
looking fellow, in a sort of frock heavily plaited or gathered in at 
the waist under a belt. He wears a low-crowned hat immensely 
belled and with narrow, rolling brim. He and his wagon look as 
if they had been fashioned for each other. He is always sleepy 
and good-natured, but wakes as quickly as a cat when called, and 
asks more than the regular fare, but takes the right one when 
given, with a smile. He is tough, his vehicle is tough, and his 



466 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

horse is tough and seems never to tire. If you are not in a hurry 
he goes in a jog-trot, but if you wish speed he goes at a break- 
neck pace, and no amount of jerking over rough streets or roads 
ever breaks the wagon, wearies the horse, or puts the driver out 
of humor. The seat is very narrow and the springs give, so that 
the occupants are constantly inclined to tumble out. This gives 
rise to a peculiar social custom, amounting almost to a super- 
stition, among the Russians — that is, that when a man rides with 
a pretty or young woman he must always keep his arm about her 
waist, to keep her from being tumbled out ; but his superstition 
teaches him that this is never necessary when his companion is an 
elderly woman or another man. The drosky generally in use is 
nearly the same throughout the entire empire. In the country 
towns many of them have bells attached to the bow. The old- 
fashioned vehicle has seats running laterally, the driver and pas- 
sengers looking to the sides. These are seen more in the provinces 
than in the capitals. Very handsome ones are used privately. 
The stylish one is a "troika," and is drawn by three horses, one 
on either side of the shaft-horse. The two outer ones are so reined 
that their heads are drawn sharply outward. The middle or shaft- 
horse trots, but the outer ones invariably gallop. When style is 
affected, a troika cff fine finish, with three good beasts, the outer 
ones with outward-bending necks in full gallop, and with a fine 
set of bells, is a very nobby affair. The horses of Russia are fine 
strong animals, and have great endurance. With the exception 
of those of Hungary, I have never seen them in any land so uni- 
versally good as are seen on the great steppe-plains of southern 
Russia. In a war with any other country, the Cossacks and their 
mounts must prove a strong arm to the service. 

On Sunday last we went to Peterhof to witness an illumination 
given in honor of the Emperor of Germany. It was a dazzling 
affair. In the beautiful water-fountain system I have already 
described, many thousands of lamps were arranged in great 
obelisks 40 to 50 feet high ; in pyramids or arches over the canal 
in frequent tiers, and scattered thickly among the branches of 
trees. Looking down from the palace terrace, or up to it from 
the long alley, the whole seemed turned into fountains and forests 
of flame. The little lamps along the walk and among the many 
fountains were so thick as to seem almost solid, and, mingling 
as they did with the water spray, the effect was of marvellous 
beauty. Behind the sheet cataracts, innumerable lamps were 
placed, with dazzling effect. Heretofore I spoke of the great 
fountains in front of the palace. There is another system of jets 
in another part of the park, running down from the high grounds 
to the Mont de Plaisir, Peter the Great's pavilion on the water. 
This is a beautiful building, 300 feet long, and only one story 
high. From the two ends run back wings of about the same- 
length as the front. In the court formed by these are fine old 



GRAND ILLUMINATION AT PETERHOF. 467 

trees. The entire building was covered in regular lines with 
lamps in ground-glass globes, marking the architectural members, 
and from the trees and high up in their branches swung innu- 
merable lamps of various colors, all artistically arranged. The 
ground was laid out in parterres of tulips of various colors, little 
lamps, however, taking the place of flowers. From this pavilion 
back nearly a quarter of a mile to the hill of 70 feet, through the 
trees, is a broad alley; along this were a vast number of obelisks 
of flame, and the woods on either side blazed as with myriads of 
huge fire-flies. Tumbling down the hill by a succession of steps 
so arranged as to represent a single cascade, are broad sheets of 
water. Under the sheets or falls were a mass of deep-red lamps, 
while on either side were double rows of amber light, and on 
and under the top cascade a blaze in white electricity. 

The illumination commenced before ten o'clock, when the twi- 
light was yet fresh and bright, but the brilliancy of 50,000 or 
more lamps was so great that we forgot it was not deep night; 
the twilight seemed to come from the artificial lights, and to be 
reflected upon the sky, rather than from the sun below the 
northern horizon. In front of the pavilion of the Mont de 
Plaisir were several steamers a few hundred yards out at sea. 
From these were sent up a large number of rockets and fireworks 
of the flower-pot kind, of huge size, and bursting far up in 
myriads of brilliant colors. In the pavilion there was a banquet 
for the visiting emperor and the czarina and her suite. We 
reached the entrance at the rear of the pavilion just as the em- 
press was coming out, surrounded by the court. 

The crowd was great and swayed back and forth, restrained by 
double tiers of soldiers with locked hands. We had been pressed 
to the front line. Seeing one of the handsomely uniformed staff 
close by, I resolved to try my patent open-sesame of " Ya Ameri- 
kanets." I addressed him, telling him I was an American travel- 
ler and anxious to see the brilliant scene within. He replied : 
" Attendez un moment, monsieur," adding that it was too late to 
let me in, as the empress was just in the gate-way. As quickly 
as she passed out and was getting into a great open six-horse 
drag, with a dozen or more ladies and attendants, the ofificer 
ordered the soldiers to let us pass. We thus had a fine opportunity 
for witnessing the most brilliant part of the display, designed 
only for God's anointed. But I was one of these, an American 
sovereign, and we two were the only persons inside except the 
court attaches. The Russians feel very much pleased by the 
courtesy extended by the American corvette Enterprise in assist- 
ing in doing honor to the guest of their czar. Ours was the only 
foreign war ship which took part in the ceremonies, excepting, of 
course, the German. I suspect the courtesy of the ofificer of the 
staff arose from this. We met some of the officers of the Enter- 
prise that night at the railroad station, and regretted we could not 



468 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

accept their cordial invitation to visit then^ at Cronstadt. We 
did not leave the terrace of the palace until after 12 o'clock. The 
scene was so brilliant that we disliked to tear ourselves away. 
We leaned for some time on the parapet overlooking the main 
fountains in front of the palace pavilion, and enjoyed the magic 
scene. The many kiosks and pavilions of the park seemed to be 
beautiful structures in flame, and the flower-gardens under us 
looked like acres of tulips and hyacinths and crocuses of light. 
The lamps were so colored as to make this effect of the par- 
terres almost perfect. I counted the lamps in a given space, and 
calculated from these that there must have been from 50,000 to 
100,000 burning in two sections of the park. 

At 12.30 we took the train. There was enough of light coming 
from the northern quarter of the heavens for me to read my 
watch. The great City had a weird appearance — so light, and yet 
so quiet and apparently deserted. Now and then we saw a police- 
man reading a newspaper, which he probably borrowed from a 
doorway. The czar's great city virtually has no night in summer. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

FINLAND— AN INTERESTING COUNTRY— THE FINNS— TORNEA— 
MIDNIGHT WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE— POSTING— FARM- 
ING— THE RELATIONS OF THE RUSSIANS WITH THEIR CON- 
QUERED SUBJECTS. 

Steamship " Tornea" between Helsingfors and Stockholm, 

August 12, 1888. 

I COMMENCE this letter within the roar of Imatra, the largest 
waterfall in Europe, and in many respects one of the finest in the 
world. A great river — the outpouring of Lake Saima, with its 
connecting lakes over 200 miles long and some 30 broad — here 
met a granite hill. A convulsion of the earth split the hill in 
twain, leaving a cleft 50 to 80 feet wide and 500 yards long, of 
solid granite walls, notched and jagged, and with here little 
recesses a few feet deep and there projections a few feet out. The 
river, approaching this cleft by a fine, dashing rapid, plunges down 
the narrow gorge, bounding, leaping, dashing, surging, roaring, 
and foaming, with a fall of 60 odd feet in 500 yards. Its furious 
flow is here and there caught by a recess, or hurled by a projec- 
tion in counter-currents, which lift several feet high and plunge 
again to rise below in huge boiling caldrons, shifting strangely 
from point to point, often several yards apart. The currents shot 
from the two walls frequently meet to be thrown in massive jets 
10 to 15 feet into the air, scattering huge crystals, or floating 
off in fleecy mist. Often a current lifts up, like the rounded back 
of a mighty monster, to plunge and rise again 100 feet below. 
From top to bottom the surging flood is one mass of snowy foam, 
enamelled here and there with spines of pea-green. The jagged 
wall of the cliff is 20 to 30 feet above the water. Against this the 
current is often thrown in mad fury, to leap high up its sides and 
to fall again into curling pits several feet lower than the general 
level. 

Imatra is not a cascade, nor is it a cataract, nor yet a rapid, but 
a hybrid between them all. No rocks project from its bed, and 
its boiling and tossing are not from obstacles hidden below, but 
rather from its own mad impulse. In a straight line for 500 
yards it looks like the lower and broken parts of a vertical 
cataract, and could it be hoisted, and yet preserving its present 
form, it would seem a mighty cascade with a sheet of snowy foam, 
showing occasionally masses of unbroken green. It roars finely, 

469 



470 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

with the dominant tone of a monster splash ; yet under it all is a 
deep bass, rich but yet mellow. On the left bank, the rising hill 
is densely clothed in spire-formed fir-trees and yellow pine, whose 
trunks seem to have caught and imprisoned the sunlight, so yel- 
low are they, lifting through the green foliage about them. The 
other bank is covered with birch in delicate feathery leaf, and 
with trunks and branches of silvery white. Walking at 1 1 o'clock 
at night in the weird twilight through this birch wood, I discovered 
a pretty effect from the waterfall. The trees seemed alive with 
countless myriads of cicadae playing upon their bony chords, 
and yet there was not a noisy insect about, nor was there a breath 
of air stirring. It was the tiny echoes of the waterfall sent back 
by millions of leaves and twigs. There is a pretty hotel on the 
precipice overhanging the fall, embowered in birchen wood, where 
50 to 100 guests are entertained in a very comfortable manner by 
piolite attendants. Four versts below, the river again tumbles 
in another fall, with surrounding scenery of a truly picturesque 
character. 

But I must go bacK a while. A run of four hours from St. 
Petersburg brought us to Wiborg, a pretty old town in Finland, 
with a population of 17,000. It is built on a jagged peninsula, at 
the head of a small bay running up from the Gulf of Finland. At 
one time it was strongly fortified. The old broken-down walls 
and earthworks run entirely around the main town and form a 
sort of promenade, from which nice views are had over the bay 
on one side and over the river, with deep indentations and rocky 
promontories on the other. A part of this promenade is turned 
into a garden or park 100 and 200 yards wide, and bending and 
running a third of a mile. This is well planted with young lin- 
dens and pretty shrubbery. A picturesque old fortress, with 
octagonal dungeon tower, seven stories high, and flanked by a 
■ strong castle, covers a bold rock inside the town and makes a very 
striking picture. The pride, however, of the Wiborgers is a private 
park, Mon Repos, open to the public, a good walk out of the 
town. The owner has taken advantage of a rocky, indented shore 
line, backed by granite precipices and wooded slopes and low hills, 
with massive rock islands in front, to make one of the prettiest 
of little parks. It has a small castle on an island some hundred 
feet high, look-out observatories, kiosks, pavilions, and grottos, 
with the woods so cut as to present many pretty vistas, and with 
soft, restful bays nestling in green wood, spreading along the 
shore, and only lacks a soft, southern atmosphere to make it a 
most restful repose. 

From Wiborg small but comfortable steamers run up the river, 
and then through a canal with 28 locks to Lake Saima, and thence 
over it and its connecting lakes into the centre and toward the 
north of Finland. The trip on the canal is really charming, now 
along a canalized river and then through artificial water-ways. 



A CANAL IN FINLAND. 471 

JnTow the steamer runs along a dark narrow stream, with margins 
of firs and silver birch ; then through a short run of artificial chan- 
nel, lifted by handsome granite locks, from which it again emerges 
into a pretty lake, bordered with country villas embowered in 
woods and mirrored in placid waters. No outlet is seen, but 
suddenly a bend around a rocky promontory brings one into other 
little rivers with other sets of locks, and again into other lakes, 
with headlands, creeks, and bays, studded with little islands, and 
at last, after being lifted 256 feet, into Lake Saima, which ex- 
tends by its connecting lakes from the 6ist up to the 64th parallel 
of latitude, and spreads with innumerable arms, all twisted, bent, 
and distorted, over two degrees of longitude. 

Finland is preeminently the land of lakes. Looking upon one 
of the correct topographical maps, the blue-tinted lakes so mark 
the whole that one would think the water covers equal surface 
with the land. They have not regular shore lines, but are so 
broken into creeks and bays; are so twisted in all directions ; are 
so pierced by promontories and headlands ; and so covered with 
innumerable islands; in parts so narrow, and then quickly so 
spreading out — that the water upon the map looks like huge sea 
monsters. There are three lake systems, running from near the 
shore of the Gulf of Finland up into the north, besides Lake La- 
doga, partly in Russia. Saima is Finland's principal lake. There 
are two other long ones, but not so large, nor have they so many 
arms and other connecting lakes. Small steamers ply over Saima 
in daily lines between several ports, and small ships are towed 
from near its northern end, laden with lumber, iron ore, tan bark, 
and tar, to the Gulf of Finland through the canal. The trip from 
Wilmanstrand, near the mouth of the canal and the terminus of a 
railroad, up to Idensalmi was most enjoyable. There is no grand 
scenery ; none of the islands or headlands are over 100 feet 
high until reaching Nyslott, some 70 miles, but they are by 
the hundreds. Some are wholly granite rocks, but generally 
wooded and green. The granite, however, is not repulsive, 
being always covered with a gray moss, brightened to a light 
green near the water. So constantly are the islands in view, that 
there are few points where the eye can catch a reach of more than 
four miles. At one time, however, we could see 20 miles off, but 
then only through a narrow channel. 

Half-way up to Kuopio we stopped at Nyslott, a pretty place, 
with a fine old castle, covering an island rock, with four handsome 
turrets and heavy walls deeply marked by cannon-shot. The 
views from several high points in the town are exquisite. It is 
built on a set of islands, divided by channels connecting the upper 
and lower lakes, through which the dark water runs in fine cur- 
rent. I was struck here by a sort of water weed, or long grass, 
which grows from the bottom of streams, even where six or more 
feet deep, bearing a white star flower with golden centre. The 



472 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

flower is only seen in an eddy or still water below a rock o^ 
bridge, but where the current is swift the long grass bends and 
waves like swimming serpents below the surface, and looks like 
threads of gold or silver enamelled in green and bronze. It 
grows in all the lakes, but it was at Nyslott that it was most 
beautiful. 

After leaving this place, the run to Kuopio was charming. 
The hills were higher, the farm lands finer, and many of the farm- 
houses very pretty. I will here state that throughout Finland the 
cultivators of the soil do not live in villages, as in most of old Con- 
tinental lands, but on their individual holdings. Frequently these 
are so small that the farm-houses are quite near each other, and 
form somewhat of hamlets. Some, however, are quite large, and 
the barns and out-houses numerous, and some fine. Generally 
the buildings are wholly unpainted, but occasionally a large house 
and barn would give variety in deep-red, with white window 
trimmings. The Finns are fine farmers — plow well, manure well, 
and save every thing. Nowhere is seen finer barley, which 
grew better and better the farther north we went, up to the 
67th degree. I am told it is good up to the 69th, and is 
brought down to the southward for seed. The rye has a fine 
appearance, but the kernel is small. It is exported to Russia for 
seed. It is grown only to a very limited extent about the 
65th degree, though we saw some as high as the 66th. 
The stalks in some fields were fully six feet high, possibly the 
average was considerably over five feet. The stand of barley, 
rye, oats, and potatoes is always good, but the oats, with few ex- 
ceptions, are light-headed. Hemp of good quality, but not over 
three feet high, is quite common on the lake lands or in- 
terior. Barley about the 67th parallel matures in eight weeks 
after being put into the ground, hence its excellence for seed. 
Farm lands along the lakes, and indeed throughout middle and 
eastern Finland, are comparatively scattered, and generally of 
small extent. The whole country is full of rocks, either vast 
masses of protruding granite earth-ribs or in boulders, many of 
them of huge dimensions. From among these the farmer has to 
pick out his fields for cultivation. 

We reached Kuopio in the late afternoon of Sunday, the 29th. 
We at once drove to a handsome park on a little promontory run- 
ning out into the lake, where we saw banners and a great con- 
course of people. There were 2,000 or 3,000 people enjoying the 
Sunday afternoon, the young men in their best clothes, and the 
women in their whitest kerchiefs. The females, old and young, 
wear a handkerchief, generally white or colored, folded on the di- 
agonal and tied under the throat. A long line was formed, and 
probably 100 couples were dancing on the green sward to music 
made by a military band. Games were going on among the more 
boisterous. One of these was amusing. A smooth pole, a foot 



PECULIARITY OF NORTHERN SUNSETS. 473 

in diameter, was mounted on strong, firm legs. Two young fel- 
lows would climb this, locking their legs under it, and then, with 
bags filled tightly with dry grass, would endeavor to knock each 
other off by pounding over the head. Rarely more than two or 
three blows were given before one or the other would tumble 
over, to the great amusement of the boys and girls looking on. 
We saw several contests, and, to the credit of the boys, did not 
see any thing but the best humor. The boys and young men up 
here have their own sports, and do not hire a picked nine to do 
athletics for them. The American rage for professional base-ball 
is very nearly akin to that of the effeminate taste of Rome, when 
people paid to see others fight, and were soon overrun by the 
hardy sons of the north, who delighted in themselves engaging in 
all kinds of hard, manly sports. 

Overlooking the town is a mountain of 700 feet high, and on 
it an observatory. From this is an extraordinary panorama. 
Spread around 20 to 30 miles are rolling green forests, and hills 
and sheets of placid water. Nowhere do the hills rise higher 
than the spot on which we stood. To the north and south the 
lake or lakes lay in all sorts of irregular shapes — here in rounded 
bays, there in long arms, now in sheets, and then in the narrow 
streams. As far as one could see toward the south, the water 
was spread with islands of various sizes and of many shapes. I 
distinctly counted 150. Among them the lake would shine as 
sheets of silver, then run off in threads, again to widen into sheets, 
and to bend of? and lose itself among the hills. To the east and 
south the wooded hills encompassed lakes and streams, and 
showed small patches of cultivated farm lands. I have never seen 
any large view which presented water and land so equally inter- 
mingled — nowhere a mere water picture, nowhere a simple land 
picture. In a fourth of the panorama water predominated, in 
the rest the land, but in any direction one looked there was 
enough of both to make a complete scene. And yet there 
was one thing sadly wanting : there was no warmth of coloring ; 
no genial atmosphere to make one feel he would like to wander 
among the woods, or over the hills, or float upon the water. 
No spot in this far north can woo one to enjoy a dreamy, restful 
inaction. We watched the sun drop down into his cold northern 
couch. Even he seemed loth to find rest in so uncongenial a 
clime. From the instant his lower limb touched the horizon 
there intervened several minutes before the last ray was hidden. 
Last winter, when near the equator, I could almost see the sun 
move as he dropped to his rest, and the tints and hues of sunset 
were of so short duration, so fleeting, that they were gone almost 
before the eye could fully catch them. Before a delicious color- 
ing could fix itself upon the retina it would vanish, and another 
as beautiful would take its place ; tint melted into tint, tones 
dissolved like floating mists. 



474 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

" The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out; 
At one stride comes the dark." 

Here it is all different. A sunset glow seems painted upon the 
sky, and the cloud-tints appear almost stable. I saw bands of 
gold and yellow and red and purple drawn along the horizon, 
and after turning from looking in another direction for some 
minutes, I was almost pained to find the same carpet-lines athwart 
the low sky ; and after the sun has gone under, the bright color- 
ings last as if indelibly fixed. 

The midnight twilight of the far north also differs in tone very 
much from the fleeting twilights of more southern latitudes, even 
as high up as Chicago. There one has a somewhat changing at- 
mosphere, and, one may say, a fleeting grayness. Here the gray 
is crystallized, and almost as fixed as in a picture on canvas. It 
may be fancy, but to me it brings an intense feeling of loneli- 
ness ; much the same feeling as I have felt when high up on an 
Alpine glacier. The finest scene is cold, and the atmosphere so 
tones every thing, that one feels he is looking through slightly 
smoked glass, and that, too, when the air is of crystal clearness. 

From Idensalmi on the lakes, about 230 miles north of Wiborg, 
we posted 138 miles across the country to Uleaborg, near the 
head of the Gulf of Bothnia. Our vehicles were of three kinds. 
On most routes we had a sort of dog-cart, with nice springs, on 
others a cart with springs to the seat alone, and on one a simple 
box set down on the axle. The stations are from 7 to 12 miles 
apart, varying to suit the farm-houses, there not being farming 
lands at regular intervals. We would frequently pass over several 
miles of flat, oozy tracts, growing pine and silver birch, without 
a house, and then over a broken country with boulders and pines. 
Where there were farms they were generally small, but, being finely 
managed, produced admirable crops. Hay "is greatly valued, and 
every patch of grass is cut. 

It rains so frequently, and the drying quality of the air is so 
deficient that hay is cured in the central or lake regions on racks. 
These are sometimes quite large and of long poles, one above 
the other, two or three feet apart, and laid on upright posts 20 
or more feet high. On these the cut grass, after lying on the 
ground a day, is hung until thoroughly cured; on them, too, are 
cured the tender twigs of birch, elm, and ash, for sheep and goat 
fodder. In general, however, sticks eight or so feet high, with 
pins a couple of feet long stuck into them at intervals of a foot 
or two, are run into the ground throughout the meadow. The 
grass is hung up on them instead of being thrown into hay- 
cocks to cure. All hay must be housed for the long winters, 
and, consequently, must be thoroughly cured. Another peculiar 
feature of farming exists. Rye and barley are dried by fire be- 
fore being threshed, and every large farmstead has several houses 
for this purpose. These are of logs close laid on moss-filled 



AN ODD STEAM BATH. 475 

chinks. In them, on cross-beams, the grain is hung, as tobacco 
is with us, and a fire is made in rock-built furnaces, the stones 
generally being in quite a pile around the flue, so to retain and 
give out a regular heat. One can tell these houses by the smoke- 
stains over the door-way, this being the only outlet for smoke. 

At the station, where we spent our first night, we found these 
houses are put up to another and very droll use. About ten o'clock 
a number of hands, men and women, came in from the hay-field. 
Soon I noticed them coming out of the dwelling house in white 
overalls — a sort of night dress, — and going to one of these dry- 
houses. I followed and found that the house was a regular steam 
bath. A dozen naked men were perched on an upper tier of 
joists, whipping themselves with birchen branches, on which the 
leaves were left. The room was so filled with steam that I could 
not see until I lit a match. A woman was throwing dipperfuls 
of water over the pile of hot stone, and thus making steam. 
They were all much amused at my curiosity. At first I supposed 
the woman did not mind the naked men, iDecause they were clad 
thoroughly in smoke and steam. But I soon found it arose not 
from this, but from an entire lack of mock modesty, for the 
men soon emerged into the open air as red as boiled lobsters, 
and reeking with sweat, and sat around to wipe off and cool, 
as the elite do in a Turkish bath. The light whipping takes 
the place of the shampooing in our- baths. After the men had 
gotten through, the women went in and took their sweat. Ex- 
ceeding diffidence prevented me waiting to find if they came out in 
nature's adornments to cool as the men did. Like Lot's wife, 
however, I could not help looking over my shoulder, and discover- 
ed that women as well as men get exceeding red when half- 
cooked. At another place we saw several girls, from 10 to 15, 
standing in front of one of these drying establishments, a few 
paces from the road. They did not flee, although their only 
garment was maiden modesty. This is one of the Asiatic 
habits of their ancestry, not yet discarded in the less-frequented 
parts of Finland. " Honi soit qui mal y pense." Adam and Eve 
did not discover their want of clothing until their eyes were 
opened by sin. Let us hope that lack of guile is at the bottom 
of this people's want of conventional modesty. I regret to 
report, however, that the birth statistics show a rather high 
rate of illegitimacy, but below that of Moscow or Vienna. By 
the way, I think I omitted to state that in the Volga we saw men 
and women, without bathing-dresses, bathing, not exactly to- 
gether, but only a few feet apart, and with no sort of screen 
between them. 

The Finns show a very decided resemblance to the Mongolians 
in type ; rather flat faces and stubby noses, and stems of the ears 
bulging as if bee-stung. They are not a bad-looking people, and 
evince a great desire to please. Speaking not a word of their Ian- 



476 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

guage, we have been forced to decided freedoms in making our 
wants known. We marched into their kitchens, into their dairies, 
and into their store-rooms to point out what we wished. They 
invariably seemed amused and never annoyed at this lack of form 
on our part. Our guide-book has a short lexicon. We occasion- 
ally find a word for the thing we wish, and instead of trying to 
pronounce it we point it out in the book, and, to the credit of the 
people, we have only found two or three old people who could not 
read. I learn it is the boast that every one can read the Bible who 
was not too old to go to school within the past 15 or 20 years, and 
nearly all write and can cipher. In this respect they are vastly in 
advance of their Russian brothers, 80 per cent, of whom do not 
know their A B C's. The bishops (Lutheran) in Finland refuse 
to confirm any one who cannot read the catechism, and thus force 
them to learn, for they are all true to their church. 

I have taken advantage of our license as ignorant strangers to 
pry into much of the home life of these people. On our posting 
trips the stations are at the houses not of inn-keepers, but of a 
better class of farmers. The horses are invariably in the pastures. 
While they were being made ready I went on voyages of discov- 
ery. The farm-houses are placed about a quadrangle more or less 
large. The people have an air of slovenliness, but their kitchens 
and utensils and their dairy-rooms are clean, and the tea and coffee 
service and plates tempt the appetite by their bright, shiny neat- 
ness, and some of the women rather amazed me by their exceed- 
ing care ; for example, I saw one wash fresh, clean-looking eggs 
before putting them into a pot to boil. One has but to look into 
their delicious-looking milk-coolers to get a desire to drink the 
milk. Every farm, large and small, has its dairy. Some make all 
their milk into butter and cheese ; others sell to larger dairymen 
in the neighborhood, who make cheese and butter on an extensive 
scale. In every part I have seen the cooler is the same — made of 
sweet wood, broad, and only three inches deep. These, after 
being emptied, are washed with a switch broom, thus reaching the 
smallest chine. They are then rinsed and filled with boiling water to 
stand for some time, after which they are placed in the air to dry. So 
many are used that one is never filled when sodden. At a moder- 
ate-sized farm I saw quite a hundred of them. The milk is delicious, 
and the butter unsurpassed. We have luxuriated on clabber, one 
of God's best gifts to man. The people in our northern States are 
sadly ignorant in not appreciating this product of the cow. If I 
had to make my choice between two cows, one which gave rich, 
sweet milk, which would not sour, and the other which gave clab- 
ber directly in nice, creamy flakes, I would take the latter every 
time. But, thanks to a beneficent Providence, a good cow fur- 
nishes rich, creamy milk for our coffee and strawberries, and the 
genial warmth of the sun turns it at the right time into glorious, 
bonny-clabber. Finland sends large amounts of butter to Sweden 



THE FINNS FINE DAIRYMEN. 477 

and to Russia. I suspect it was the long contact with the cleanly- 
Swedes which made these people neat in their household and 
dairy matters. 

For seven months of the year cattle are housed. The barns 
have very convenient shallow stalls, with yokes for the animal, in- 
stead of ropes to go around the horns and thus bruise this tenderest 
part of the horned animal. Over each stall is a birchen tub, hold- 
ing nearly a bushel for the cow or calf to feed from, and a broad 
alley between the stalls. It is now summer, and the cow-houses 
are not used, but every thing is in its place ready for use, — at least 
this was the case in over a dozen houses I looked into. Close by 
the horse and cow stable is a small separate room, with a large iron 
kettle, larger or smaller, in proportion to the size of the house, 
set in a stone furnace. In this the dairy utensils are washed 
and scalded, and the food of the cattle is cooked in winter. 
All food, except hay and straw, is cooked, and in the winter 
fed more or less warm. Even in the summer horse-food (ex- 
cep hay) is in the shape of coarse bread. Mosquitoes, gnats, and 
night-flies are so bad that smothered fires are built about the cow- 
lots in the evening. The poor brutes stand or lie about these 
when the smoke is so dense that one would think it suffocating. 
The beasts evidently enjoy it, and not being forced to switch their 
tails could give their entire energies to the cud. Willie suggested 
that they could furnish ready-made jerked beefs. Our post-boys in- 
variably carry three or four rings of bread and some hay in the 
cart to feed their horses at the end of the stage before going back. 

At some stations we found no men. The women then brought 
out the cart, went to the field for the horse, and hitched them up, 
and were our post-boys, but generally we had bright little fellows 
from 10 to 12 years old, and a few times little girls. The weather 
was showery while we were posting, and we thus lost considerable 
time. I employed it in speering about and writing. Travel in 
Finland is ridiculously cheap. A horse and cart, holding us two 
and our light baggage, costs a little under five cents a mile. A 
run of ten miles would take about an hour and a half. It did us 
good to see the real pleasure we afforded when we gave our lit- 
tle post-boys and girls a half-mark, or ten cents, at the end of their 
stage. At the farm-house or post-stations, where we spent the 
nights, we had good beds, a supper on bacon and raw fish, rye 
bread, and Swedish hard bread (delicious), and as delightful milk, 
cream, butter, and clabber as one ever ate, and, in addition to 
these, very good coffee and sometimes eggs for breakfast. And 
the whole for two of us cost from 70 cents to$i. The travellers' 
rooms at the post-houses were delightfully clean, — one or two with 
strips of carpet, others strewn with sweet fir-twigs. The little 
tow-headed children were good-natured, and two or three pet hogs 
invariably grunted under our windows, with a gentle squeal for a 
crust. The hogs were always clean, and really not bad pets. We 



478 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

had always beautifully curled tailed dogs to keep us company. 
One stayed with us 48 miles, although we changed four or five 
times our post-boys. He had the most independently double- 
curled tail I ever saw. He was evidently well known at the differ- 
ent stations. I think he recognized us as free-born Americans, and 
wished to go home with us. We got rid of him by dodging him. 

Finnish has no affinity, I am told, with any European language, 
or perhaps any Asiatic. It has no prepositions. Forthem a suf- 
fix is added. For example, a sign-board has on it " Uluum 50." 
This means "To Ulu 50 versts." While " Ulusta " means "from 
Ula." To show the difficulty of acquiring the language, a Finnish 
lady said to me that she learned Russian quite correctly in a year, 
while a Russian friend, a better linguist than she, was two years 
in learning Finnish as well. And yet Russian is considered a very 
difficult language to master. 

The Finns are a hardy-looking people — not tall nor heavy, but 
firm. The men have tawny-colored hair, and, like the Russians, 
cut it rather squarely around the nape of the neck, but their hair 
being thin, this manner of cutting does not give them the uncouth 
look of Russians. The latter have generally very heavy suits. 
They cut it almost square around the head, and as they go much 
of the time, when at work, bareheaded, the heavy hair, banged in 
front and square behind the ears, gives them a low, animal ex- 
pression. I speak of the common man. The better classes and 
the military shingle the rear hair. Finnish children have heads 
so flaxen that it amuses one. No flax is so severely white. 
Their little faces, and the skin under their hair looks brown in 
comparison with the tow. The hair of the women is generally 
light and yellowish — not so often tawny as that of the men, pos- 
sibly because their heads, being generally covered by a handker- 
chief, are less browned by the weather. The skin of the old 
women's faces usually looks tough enough to make saddle-bags 
of without tanning. Some of the men have very light hair, but 
that is on the west, where they are more or less intermixed with 
the Swedes. 

I said the Finns were good farmers. Besides their fine fields 
of rye, barley, and potatoes on lands not naturally rich, the beau- 
tiful ditches and fine fences evince careful husbandry. The land 
is generally cultivated in beds. The ditches dividing these beds, 
generally about two feet deep, and sodded about two feet on each 
side and down to the bottom, are beautifully made. Even this 
sod to the bottom of the ditch is mown. Not a foot of grass 
land is left ungrazed or uncut. All farms are fenced in and fields 
are separated by fences. These are of light rails, 12 to 15 feet 
long, laid on each other, on an incline of say 25 degrees, the lower 
end on the ground, and supported by two light uprights fastened 
together by birch withes, from four to six feet apart. The rails 
lie upon each other between these uprights, and a light brace at 



FINNS GOOD FARMERS AND A STRONG RACE. 479 

alternate uprights runs through the upper withe fastening, and 
rests on the ground some three or four feet off. The fences are 
about four and a half feet high and have the appearance of rough 
pickets set at an angle instead of upright. We have seen hun- 
dreds of miles of fences and not a hundred yards out of repair. 
Fields are entered through light swinging gates or by neat draw- 
bars. The general appearance of much of the country reminds 
one of parts of Wisconsin. The people here have inherited from 
their frozen climate the necessity of economy, perseverance, and 
ever-watchful care. They have learned that warmth and food 
come from steady labor alone, and with them muscular labor is 
not lacking of the honor which should be the result of God's fiat, 
" By the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy daily bread." We 
honor labor in America, but we think it the more honorable when 
we let the other fellow do it. 

Young America, north as well as south, rushes to the city in the 
hope of fine clothes, gay times, and little sweat. The result is 
inevitable. Brilliant, idle, indolent, and luxurious young America 
is having his place taken by the hardy sons of northern Europe. 
They come not with the battle-axe and the iron mace, killing and 
slaying, but with sturdy muscles, iron spades, and picks, conquer- 
ing and supplanting. Bright and intelligent young America needs 
not be killed. It will die out and its place be taken by the immi- 
grant it now laughs at and calls uncouth. Sic semper ! The 
battle may be to the swift, but the land inevitably goes to the 
strong and to the enduring. TJie Finns are a sturdy race, but 
just now they are a somewhat anxious people. Last winter was 
here and in Russia the coldest known within too years, and so far 
the summer has been the coolest felt within 140 years. The grain 
of all sorts shows no sign of yellowing, and is from two to three 
weeks later than usual, and but little hay has been made. An 
early frost would be disastrous, and some are feeling quite blue. 
It seems singular to see rye being put in the ground for next 
year's crop, while close by it is a waving field of this year with 
heads yet unfilled. The grass lands presented a busy scene on 
the few sunny days we have had among them. Man, woman, and 
child were out, all making hay while the sun shone, and at ten 
o'clock, the evenings looked almost as busy in the hay-fields as 
did the mid-day 

Uleaborg is a pretty city of nearly 20,000 people ; does a heavy 
export business in tar and fish, and is the centre of the lumber 
trade. A large number of ships, mostly barges, lie out at anchor 
near it and in many of the creeks and bays on the coast up to 
Tornea. We must have seen thirty or more between these points, 
all being loaded with lumber for England and Germany. A large 
lumber traffic is also done from the lake regions through the 
canal. It, however, is principally for St. Petersburg and the east- 
ern Baltic ports. The rafts are generally towed by small tugs, 



48o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and some we saw being drawn by means of a windlass turned by 
a horse attached to a sweep upon the raft. There is also at 
Uleaborg an extensive tanning business. A very good harness 
and sole leather is made by using the bark of a small willow bush 
which grows everywhere on the lowish lands and is substituted 
for oak and hemlock. 

Last December at Singapore, within a degree of the equator, 
we felt an intense desire to visit that monster nothing, which 
bends the mightiest ocean currents, and to stand astride that 
gossamer figment of science which stills to a zephyr the fiercest 
tropical storm. Finding ourselves a few days ago only a degree 
and a half away from another geographical fiction which bids the 
great ruler of the day to pause in his daily rounds and for nearly 
a half-month, denies him his nightly rest — the intangible and im- 
palpable arctic circle, which for long months holds the demon of 
darkness fast in his frozen grasp, and to our young imaginations 
has been a necklace of frost hung upon the bosom of the north- 
ern world ; — finding ourselves so close to that sweet Eden which 
some scientists think is warmed into continuous delicious summer 
by mother-earth's central fires, whence man was forever banished 
when he presumed to learn that which belonged only to his eternal 
Maker, and around which is thrown an impassable barrier of crys- 
tal swords flashing in icy brightness ; so close to that rosy home 
of the Borealis race, which darts through the polar opening in 
earth's rounded dome, and dancing athwart the sky dazzles us 
with its flitting splendor; — finding ourselves so close to the polar 
circle, we resolved to enjoy the sensation of being within the 
frigid zone. 

A run of twelve hours on a tiny steamer along the coast, within 
many green islands, off many little ports where the saw-mill 
buzzes, and before which lay many ships to bear off lumber to be 
built into the homes of other lands ; a pleasant sail brought us 
to the mouth of the Tornea River, which brings down an enor- 
mous volume of water from Lapland's melting snows. This is the 
dividing river between Russian Finland and northern Sweden. 
On the Russian side is the town of Tornea, and on the Swedish 
pretty Haparanda, connected by a long foot-bridge over which we 
passed to visit the Swedish frontier after lo o'clock at night. 
Here we saw many evidences of Swedish neatness and order. 
The houses, homes of nearly 2,000 people, are of charmingly neat 
hewn or sawed logs, all painted prettily, generally of a neutral red 
tint with white trimmings along windows and corners, nearly all 
with gardens and on clean streets, and nearly every other one 
with a letter and paper box, showing the people to be a reading 
one. We saw many of the people promenading, all well dressed 
and tidy, even one of them who was quietly undulating from one 
side of the street to the other, and enjoying greatly a resolution 
not to go home till morning, and as morning would come so soon 
had laid in a heav}- supply of " bran vin." 



TORN E A RIVER AND ITS SCENERY. 481 

I will say here, for the benefit of our policemen and their drinlc- 
ing pets, that throughout Russia and somewhat in Finland we 
have seen many men in every stage of drunkenness, from the gen- 
tleman endeavoring to walk a straight line, to the stupid drunkard 
asleep against a wall, but have not seen a single one who was the 
least noisy on the streets; nor have we seen a policeman interfere 
with the quiet staggerer, except to help him to mount a curb- 
stone or to get into a drosky. As long as he does not disturb 
others he is allowed the personal liberty of getting drunk as he 
pleases. They recognize the doctrine of the economy of vice, 
and permit a fool to quietly kill himself rather than take care of 
and protect him against himself at the expense of the state. After 
all, has Jack not as much right to catch his death by sleeping in 
a ditch with a heavy load of whiskey aboard, as Mr. Plump has 
to pull apoplexy out of a dish of terrapin, or Miss Grace to court 
consumption with thin shoes and tight laces? The world is get- 
ting very full, and the fool-killer may yet be recognized as a val- 
uable factor in political economy. 

Tornea is a few minutes below the 66th parallel. Thence up to 
the 67th we rode in little carts, posting as we had done in the 
interior, and as we afterwards did back to Uleaborg. The ride 
was a delightful one and the scenery very charming. The river 
averages nearly a third of a mile in width, now flowing for miles 
in a placid stream with strong current, and then for a mile or so 
a dashing rapid, rushing as violently as the rapids above the 
American fall at Niagara. Here it would widen into a sheet so 
broad as to deserve to be characterized a lake ; then contracting, 
it would rush in a narrow bed and roar in deafening noise. Far 
out into the rapids, and sometimes almost across the stream, are 
built many strong fences or frames, among which during the sea- 
son traps and nets are set for salmon. The catch is very great, 
and next to lumber is the principal export. Back from the river, 
at distances varying from one to two miles, are ranges of broken 
hills from 100 or 200 to 400 or 500 feet high and sloping down to 
the stream. Their crests are wooded, mostly in firs and pines, 
while the slopes are more or less cultivated, with red farm-houses 
but unpainted barns, cow- and hay-houses. Frequently these 
buildings follow so closely one to another as to appear a succes- 
sion of scattered villages. All cattle being housed for six to 
eight months makes so many buildings necessary that quite a 
small farm seems a hamlet. The Swedish side of the river pre- 
sents the more prosperous home life. But the farms on either 
are so many, the houses so abundant, and the crops of barley and 
potatoes so bountiful that it was hard to realize that we were just 
outside the arctic circle. The scenery was pretty, possessing 
many of the characteristics of that shown by the Susquehanna ia 
Pennsylvania. The tinting, however, entirely lacked warmth, and 
had too uniformly a cold, green tone. The atmosphere had a. 
darkened tone, something like certain fine-cut glass in which lamp^ 



482 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

black seems to have been dissolved. Another striking feature up 
here is a sort of all-pervading silence. The world seems to be 
hushed and quiet. But still the trip was well worth making for 
the scenery alone, and in that way repaid us for the fatigue. 

The second day from Tornea brought us to Aavasaksa, an iso- 
lated mountain 700 feet high, and just below the circle, when the 
sun was yet three to four hours up. The panorama from its 
summit was magnificent. Around us for many miles lay, in 
broken piles, low mountains, green with forests, and here and 
there bright with little sheets of water. The great river wound 
among the hills, coming from the north and sweeping in a broad 
channel below us, with islands and a few scattered farms, and an 
affluent stream coming from the east with a fall, a few versts 
away, whose roar was mellow and soothing ; far toward the south 
the river swept in a placid sheet. But our eyes rested with in- 
tense interest upon some blue hills a degree farther north, on 
which for three days in each year old Sol rolls in vain endeavor 
to end his long diurnal run. Hundreds of visitors, for whose 
benefit a pretty pavilion has been erected on the mountain top, 
come here in the three long days of June to look upon the mid- 
night sun. We spent two hours enjoying the splendid panorama, 
and then drove to a station five miles yet to the north, where we 
were to stop for the night. There we took a fresh, strong, tough 
Finland horse, and after watching the sun set at 9.40, drove tow- 
ard the north pole, to spend the exact midnight, when we knew 
we would be miles within the frigid zone. 

It may have been an idle fancy, but there was a delightful 
charm in the lonely drive along the banks of the splendid river, 
which for a mile or so was a rushing rapid ; through lanes of silver 
birch and tall firs lifting like spires on either side, and looking 
upon the northern horizon, which stretched for many degrees 
east and west in warm and brilliant glow. A few long bands of 
clouds lay close to the earth, like ribbons in pink, fringed with 
flame, with others above them in gold and violet, while floating 
half way to the zenith were fleecy clouds in purple with golden 
fringe. These brilliant dyes changed not nor melted away as one 
looked upon them, but seemed painted in living colors upon an 
eternal canvas ; clouds would slowly move, but their tints and 
colorings seemed to move with them. The only visible and 
marked change was in a lengthening out of the glowing horizon 
as the sun moved below more to the east. We paused just at 12 
and silently watched the strange and weird scene, and my watch 
showing exact midnight, Willie took out a book and read a page 
by the bright light coming from due north. A bat flew close to 
our heads, a toad hopped across the road, and we heard the tinkle 
of a distant cow-bell. How strange it sounded ! there was no other 
living sound to be heard ; not the buzz of a single insect. A gen- 
tle murmur came from a river-rapid a half mile or more away. 



A WEIRD MIDNIGHT IN THE FRIGID ZONE. 483 

Its plaintive murmur seemed to intensify the prevailing silence. 
How strangely sounded that cow-bell so far towards the unap- 
proachable north pole ! We were nearly upon the 67th degree of 
north latitude, and some miles within that circle which we had 
always regarded as the synonym of eternal frost. Northward the 
woods opened, giving us a clear view ; about us were tall birch 
trees like sentinels in uniforms of frosted silver, their light foliage 
bending in plumes of lace, and a few firs in solemn green. About 
their roots were strewn boulders of all sizes, but over ground and 
boulders were spread carpetings of gray moss so thick that we 
sank into it to our ankles. We cut bark on which to write our 
names as souvenirs of this, our farthest northern travel. Wist- 
fully and in silence we looked at the glorious picture painted on 
the northern sky, and, mounting our cart, slowly trotted back to 
our station, which we reached as the sun was just rising upon our 
backs. We have seen quite a number of toads far up here, but 
have not heard a sound from one. They and frogs take the place 
of singing-birds in the. tropics. Here they are now silent. The 
next two days we had a rather dismal ride in light and cold rains, 
but we cared not ; we had obtained what we came for and had 
fine weather for it, and besides we had already seen most of the 
road. We had, however, good weather for our last day's posting, 
and for our run south by rail from Uleaborg to Helsingfors. 

The railroad carried us through much interesting country, with 
thin lands and little cultivation, until we came to Lake Nasjari, 
180 miles north of the south line of Finland Thence there was 
some exquisite scenery. We skirted this and Lake Pyhajarvi 
for nearly 100 miles, now with wide water views, and then with 
bits of inlet and bays with long promontories and islands, and 
a very considerable extent of farming country, giving the land- 
scape some of that delicious home and water scenery so much 
admired on the north England lakes. The country all along the 
Bothnia coast has much more of Swedish characteristics than in 
the central portions of the land. In the towns the better classes 
speak Swedish almost entirely, and the farms and houses are pre- 
tentious. Indeed, there are few countries in which there are so 
good farm-houses and barns. From this down the rye was 
nearly ready for the sickle, and we were in a decidedly temperate 
zone. 

Tammersfors and Tavastehuus are two picturesque towns^ one 
with a fine old castle, and a rapid river running through the centre 
with a fall of about 60 feet, affording a boundless water-power, a 
most beautiful series of intermural pictures, and a roar which can 
always be heard over the noise of the town. The views, too, 
from different points about these two towns are as fine as hun- 
dreds in other lands which furnish the only attractions for long 
excursions. Swedish blood along the western side of Finland is 
very apparent among the women. They are better-looking and 



484 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

not worked quite so hard as horses, as are those of the inner lake 
regions. We saw many exceedingly pretty ones at station houses 
all the way on our ride between Uleaborg and the north circle. 
Three daughters of one house were of a delicate type of beauty 
that would have made them attractive in any parlor. We saw 
several photos from relatives in America, pictures taken in Min- 
neapolis and Wisconsin. On our train was a young peasant girl 
on her way to Northern Michigan. She will not have to work as 
hard there as her sisterhood do in this land. Here there is abso- 
lute woman's rights; they seem thoroughly independent, and ex- 
ercise the right to do all the heavy duties of life quite as freely as 
do their husbands and brothers. 

I was told of a custom among the purely Finnish peasantry of 
the interior which shows a very peculiar freedom between the 
sexes — a species of marriage on trial. A couple live together as 
man and wife — somewhat clandestinely, but often with the knowl- 
edge of the parents — for a year, after which, if they find the rela- 
tionship conducive to happiness, they go before the pastor and 
have the knot tied by law and church. If not agreeable they 
separate, which separation does not hurt the girl for other en- 
gagements. The parents are, when cognizant of the arrange- 
ment, careful to have witnesses to it. Then, if the man backs 
out, he is forced to give one-half of what he owns to the deserted 
girl. The man endeavors to get up the affair without witnesses, 
in which event he is not held, but he is compelled to support the 
offspring, if there be an)', such offspring being recognized by the 
girl's family. Infanticide in any of its forms is unknown in the 
land. 

At Tavastehuus I saw a group of eight or ten women, all well 
dressed, on the platform of the railway station. One of them was 
a rosy-faced, pretty girl of about 20. She carried a magnificent 
bouquet, and was the recipient of much attention from the others, 
who kissed her twice round. When the last warning bell rang 
she was locked in the arms of an elderly woman, who with stream- 
ing eyes strained her again and again to her heart, and, I saw, 
asked the good God to bless her child. They were mother and 
daughter. As the train pulled out the girl stood upon the car 
platform and bade them adieu with wet cheeks. But I thought I 
saw a ray — a gleam of cheery hope shining through her tears. I 
aske'd a man where she was going. " Till Amerika — till Minnis- 
sota," was the reply. Ah ! I then read that hopeful light in her 
tearful eyes. She was leaving friends and kindred to go all alone 
to the far-off land, where her lover had gone before her, and where 
she v/as to join him, to fill the nest he had built up for his com- 
ing mate. Who knows what high places the young to be hatched 
in that free nest may fill in the lake State of the Northwest? 

Helsingfors is a very pretty, finished town of fifty-odd thousand 
people. It is admirably paved, has fine public buildings, a pretty 



HELSINGFORS. 485 

garden and esplanade, where music is played each evening and 
thousands sip tea, coffee, or beer, and enjoy a social time. There 
are about the city some fine views and a noble Lutheran church. 
The Finns are nearly all Lutherans, there being few Roman or 
Greek churches in the country. They have in the interior and 
north a droll mode of begging for the church. In front of each 
of several village churches we saw a large wooden man in some- 
what clerical dress, with painted, sleek cheeks and hat, quite well 
executed, standing near the road, with a poise of hand showing 
he was making a request. His abdomen is a locked box, into 
which the passer-by can drop his pennies without entering the 

portals of the sacred edifice. If Dr. had erected one of 

these in front of his fine church at home, what a world of pathetic 
pleading he could have saved. 

We have now been two and a half months in Russia and her 
dependencies; we have seen her provinces and people more or 
less Asiatic, some of them purely Oriental ; have seen Russians 
in their original home and in their conquered dominions. I have 
thus been enabled to draw some conclusions, and I think fair 
ones, as to the relations of this mighty conquering nation, with 
her Asiatic conquered subjects, and to compare such relations 
with those existing in India between the English and their brown- 
skinned subjects. I came to this country with a traditional ha- 
tred for the autocratic rule of the Russian monarch, and with my 
sympathies all on the side of the Anglo-Saxon and against the 
Slav. These prejudices have been considerably removed, and I can 
now look calmly upon what may be the inevitable, and draw juster 
conclusions as to what that inevitable will be. In giving my ideas 
let it not be understood that I pretend not to have derived them 
solely from observation ; I got much second-hand. But I have 
seen enough to be able to tell how far this second-hand informa- 
tion may be reliable. A little reading about a country, with a 
superficial personal observation, gives a better knowledge of it 
than a deep study of the same in the closet at home. Our wisest 
biblical student in his study surrounded with books and every 
edition of the Old and New Testaments, does not comprehend 
the truths of the Bible as well as a far less learned man does, who 
has lived among the bleak hills and the valleys where Jesus lived 
and walked, and has studied Oriental character from living models. 
A thoughtful man can reach some juster conclusion after a hur- 
ried tour of two or three months in India and Russia, coupled with 
superficial reading, than a far abler one can from long study at 
home. For the latter is more or less compelled to get his idea 
from men who saw with prejudiced eyes or wrote with stipendary 
pens. It is often difficult to determine whether a learned treatise 
touching European politics, or on any subject affecting such pol- 
itics, is a scientific, honest dissertation, or a paper paid for by 
the diplomatic bureau of one or another European power. 



486 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Americans are intensely lovers of ideal liberty, and haters of 
theoretic slavery. The " idea " and the " theory " are perfectly 
satisfactory to the vast majority. With the knowledge that they 
can be free when they wish, and cannot be made unwilling slaves, 
they are not only willing but glad to have others, whom they 
imagine their servants, to do all the governing while they them- 
selves are left undisturbed to build up homes and to amass wealth 
for themselves and their children. A mere tithe of them really 
think for themselves. Once every year they imagine they do 
considerable thinking on governmental affairs, and every four 
years are hugely impressed with the profundity of their thought, 
and of their intense earnestness in putting their thought into 
action. But if we are candid with ourselves, we must confess that 
a very few have done our thinking, and we march up to the polls 
to put into action the determinations of a mere handful. But we 
are freemen and do this of our own accord, and are glad that the 
few have saved us from aching labor, and we imagine we choose 
this handful which saves us so much rack of brain. 

Now the children of ages — untold ages of Asiatic despotism 
do not care a fig for this ideal or for this theory. They are satisfied, 
as their forefathers have been for countless centuries, to let the God 
of Fate select the men who think for them, and blindly follow 
without a dream of any thing different, and are never aroused 
from their sleep unless western agitation thunders in their ears, 
and even then they are not awakened, but listlessly and half- 
asleep, utter a " Mashallah " or invocation to some heathen god, 
and forget. The Russian, like his eastern neighbor, not only cares 
not for this ideal and this theory, but has schooled himself to the 
belief that while he himself, individually, may be capable of self- 
government, his neighbors are not. He believes that, while he 
himself might stand as a free man, his neighbors would make 
fools of themselves, and in their folly would give great trouble. 
He is therefore perfectly satisfied to let his " Little Father," the 
autocratic czar, do all his thinking and save him the trouble, and 
to do all the acting and thus save him from his foolish neighbors. 
All he asks is to be let alone to attend to his own affairs, and his 
"Little Father" does so let him alone. He has complete personal 
liberty. He can work and eat and drink and can get drunk if he 
wishes, and whatever interference he feels from his ruler he thinks 
absolutely necessary to keep not himself but his unwise neighbors 
from doing harm. He therefore submits without a murmur. When 
he goes as a conqueror into Asia he gives this same sort of rule 
to the conquered, which is a vast improvement upon the system 
they have grown up under, and under which no man had any thing 
he could call his own if his superiors coveted it. The czar is gov- 
erned by no written law, but he is far more governed by public 
opinion than is the President of the United States, except just 
before our king asks the people for another term, when he becomes 



RUSSIANS FRATERNIZE WITH THE CONQUERED. 487 

keenly alive to the wishes of the dear unwashed. The czar, too, 
is governed and restrained by an intense religious idea — by rigid 
customs. This religion is that of Christ, which preaches good- 
will to all and love and human kindness. He is an autocrat, yet 
he does not run counter to this idea nor violate these customs. 
His crown would not be worth the velvet which softens the metal 
to his brow, should he attempt to violate this idea or disobey 
these customs. He would not wear it a week; his soldiers would 
tear it from his head. He has carried his armies into Finland, 
and the Finns govern themselves and are among the freest people 
in Europe. Just now the " Little Father" is beginning to russian- 
ize the Finns more than he has heretofore done. He has carried 
his armies and his rule into the Caucasus and the Transcauca- 
sus ; but that rule is precisely the same as that meted out to 
Moscow or the region of the Ural ; and the Russians, as individ- 
uals, treat the conquered people just as they treat each other in 
the province of St. Petersburg. Georgians and Armenians are 
generals in the army and won great honors in the late Asiatic 
wars. The governor-general's photograph hangs in show-windows 
in full Georgian costume. Russian officers are driving and prome- 
nading with Georgian ladies, and one sees Russians and natives 
eating and drinking with each other in the restaurants and caf6s 
as friends and equals. Georgian officers and gentlemen drive and 
promenade with and take to the theatre Russian ladies. All the 
laborers and drosky drivers at Tiflis are natives, and those beyond 
are Tartars. They meet Europeans as men, and look them fear- 
lessly in the eye as men. I saw Tartar drivers stoutly maintain- 
ing their rights in disputes as to fares or charges not only with 
Russians, but with some who wore epaulets ; and if a Russian 
should strike one of them he would get blow for blow. I saw no 
evidence of servility — no cringing of manner among the Tartars 
and Bokharians or Persians on the Caspian. They were as manly 
and as independent in their bearing towards Russians, both civili- 
"ans and officers, as are the Tartars on the Volga, and these latter are 
as brave and bold-looking as if they owned the land now, as they 
once did. 

Tartars promenade on the esplanades and listen to the music as 
if the show belonged to them, and Bokharians and Persians on the 
Caspian are treated by the Russians in no way outwardly differ- 
ent from that accorded to those who belong to the conquering 
race. The Russians fraternize with the natives as thoroughly as 
their difference of religion will permit, and the mosques in cities 
on the Volga and in the Caucasus are as safe from individual 
insult as are the Christian churches. But one sees everywhere the 
evidences of a yielding on the part of native customs and civiliza- 
tion to that of the conquering classes. Russians do not go into 
the conquered countries to squeeze them for a time and then to 
return to the north to enjoy their gains. They go to stay, to live. 



488 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

to be a part of the country — I doubt not to get, if they can, the 
largest half of the cheese, but to eat it on the spot. It is the 
poHcy of the government to russianize its conquered countries, 
and the Russians as individuals do their share by making homes 
among the people and by mingling with them. The railroad cars 
of all classes are open to the natives, and if they ride in the third 
it is because it fits their purse, and they find economical Russians 
in the seat next them. As far as I could see, and from what 
I could learn, the veil which hides the Mohammedan woman is 
being to some extent dropped, and they are beginning to mingle 
with their rulers and are becoming of them. The Russian is a 
man of strong fibre and very conservative, but he cares but little 
for class and knows nothing like caste. In this he differs widely 
from the English. These inveigh violently against the caste dis- 
tinctions of the Indians, and yet the native of India sees as much 
caste exclusiveness among the whites as among his own people, 
but of a different nature. Hindoo caste is religious ; English caste 
is purely social, and the lines are drawn with ridiculous rigidity. 
A Hindoo regards himself as religiously defiled if he eats or 
drinks from a cup used by a Christian or by one of his own people 
of a lower grade. An Englishman holds himself severely aloof in 
social intercourse from his inferior European, and the women are 
as strict observers of precedence as at home they are at a court 
drawing-room, and a native less than a nawab is utterly tabooed. 
The Russians are savages in battle, but when the battle is 
ended the native kindness of their disposition at once shows 
itself. Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff gave me several examples of 
this. As, for instance, when in their fierce fights in the region of 
Kars and Khiva, after a town had been given up to sack and 
pillage, he had often seen Russian soldiers, with hands bloody 
from the fight, feeding hungry natives, coddling children in their 
arms, and nursing sick women. " We do not want any fight with 
England in India," said he, " but if we should get into one she 
will find our Asiatic subjects loving us, while her own hate her." 
And the old, battle-worn soldier's eyes burned when he spoke of 
the abuse of Russia by the English press. "Ah, mon prince," I 
replied, " why cannot England and Russia go side by side across 
Asia and give to her the true light of western civilization?" 
" We will if England be wise," he rejoined. " We do not v/ant 
India, but we want to carry Russian trade into the country. But 
if war shall ever come we will be welcomed by many a strong- 
handed Hindoo." I have been almost amazed to find among the 
informed men in Russia the belief that England's weakness in 
India springs from the causes I have enumerated heretofore, and 
which I wrote in my note-book months ago. I formed these 
opinions when my prejudices against Russia were so great that I 
thought every step she made toward central Asia was an injury to 
liberty. 



RUSSIA'S METHODS BETTER THAN ENGLAND' S. 489 

These opinions are now greatly modified. Russian dominion 
beyond the Caspian will be an advancement in civilization, and 
her kind of rule is the best suited to, if not the only one for which 
the Asiatic is or can be for a long period fitted. She can rule her 
conquered people by autocratic methods and do no violence to 
her own traditions, and without contravening her own notions of 
government. She is an autocracy, and her people, as a rule, not 
only acquiesce in, but are satisfied with her methods. They say 
they could not be so well governed in any other manner. They 
admit that they are fearfully burdened by a colossal army, but 
say they are forced by their European neighbors to keep it up in 
its full numerical strength, and to give it every modern improve- 
ment. 

England stands upon a different platform. Hers is a rule of 
the people founded upon liberty. The very A B C of her consti- 
tution inculcates an unconquerable love of liberty. She cannot 
violate safely the spirit of her constitution, nor vary materially 
from the true chart, without running the risk of wrecking her ship 
of state. She has a difficult problem to solve in governing the 
heterogeneous masses of her Indian dominions. As a govern- 
ment she is doing well. But the people — the individuals — she 
sends to them are, I fear, doing much to undo the work the gov- 
ernment has done and is doing. I am England's well wisher in 
her Indian work but I cannot shut my eyes. 

A beautiful sail through a thousand or more islands, now in broad 
lakes and then in narrow salt straits, brought us to Abo, once 
Finland's capital. This is a picturesque town, covering an im- 
mense territory with its 28,000 people ; widely scattered houses, 
so built to avoid conflagrations, with which it has been several 
times afflicted ; a castle of nearly 600 years ago, and a fine old 
cathedral, and a park prettily climbing a high eminence with 
noble outlooks. Here we received the Grand Duke Michael of 
Russia, the Princess of Baden, and his son and her daughter, 
going to visit their kinswoman, the Crown Princess of Sweden. 
We also had aboard the Finnish author. Professor Torpelius, 
whom I found a very urbane and pleasant man. He is well on 
in years. His sweet young daughter was a model of filial at- 
tention and affection. 



CHAPTER XLV. 



SAIL TO SWEDEN— PRINCELY FELLOW- VOYAGERS— STOCKHOLM— 
THE SWEDES— HOMELIKE LANDSCAPES. 

Stockholm^ August i6, 1888. 

The little steamer Tornea had her saloon prettily decked with 
flowers and was very gay with bunting when she steamed out of 
the Aurajoki, on which Abo is situated, and our cabins were 
fragrant from huge and really elegant bouquets, tied with ribbons 
of great size and of rich texture in the colors of Russia and of 
Baden, presented to our princely passengers by ladies of the city. 
There was a large concourse of people on the quay, with some 
soldiers and a band of music ; also a singing band from a Russian 
battalion stationed at Abo. By the way, the Russian regiments, 
as far as we have seen, all have a sort of glee clubs, which sing 
rollicking songs very finely, the refrains and choruses being very 
like those of German and our own student songs. They sing 
marching, when the whole regiment seems to join in. One even- 
ing in southern Russia our train was passing through a wood, 
near which was an encampment, and a night practice was going 
on. The shouts and chorus of the marching men were very 
musical and spirited, coming through the white birchen forest. 
And now I will mention another thing, which is very wonderful 
in all of these northern countries — that is, the perfection to which 
hot-house cultivation has been brought. One sees in windows in 
northern Russia, Finland, and Sweden, not only very beautiful 
exotics, but of the costly kinds with us, and oftentimes in the 
houses of people of very moderate means, thus showing them to 
be of small cost. There are more flowers to be seen in the win- 
dows of a moderately sized town of Russia than one would see in 
all the windows of the United States. In Stockholm the fuchsia 
trees in the parterres in parks and squares are of very large size 
and perfect form and in many varieties. Everywhere we have 
been for the past two months we have frequently paused to 
admire in private windows beautiful plants, such as one sees with 
us only at residences of the very rich, or about the gardens and 
shops of professional florists. This arises from the fact that the 
season for out-door culture is so short that the greater attention 
is paid to house culture ; and houses here are kept throughout 

490 



THE GRAND DUKE MICHAEL. 491 

the long winter at an even temperature. " The heat of my house," 
said a gentleman to-day, " is that of gentle spring for weeks and 
weeks, although without, the snow is frozen solid five feet deep 
and the thermometer is at — ," naming a degree of Celsius agree- 
ing with 20 Fahrenheit below zero. Thermometers are in every 
house, and are so common, permanently fixed on the outside of 
the windows, that they seem to have been in the very estimates 
of the builders. Walls are of great thickness when of brick or 
stone, and once heated hold their heat evenly ; and well chinked 
log-houses are the warmest of all. Wood is a non-conductor. 

But to return. The cabins of the Tornea also had a number of 
handsome growing plants, perhaps somewhat more than usual, for 
our handsome Finnish captain was quite proud of his imperial 
guests. This, he said, was the first time in the history of Russia 
when one of the imperial family had gone out of the country in a 
commercial ship. Heretofore private yachts or armed ships had 
been used for such purpose. While talking with the captain, the 
young duke joined us and learned of our visit to Caucasus, where 
he had been born and had lived up to within a few years. After- 
ward he came to me and informed rne that his father would 
be pleased to meet me. I found the Grand Duke Michael an 
agreeable gentleman, fully six feet tall, very handsome, of 
splendid physique, soldierly in his bearing, somewhat bluff and 
plain-spoken, and yet evidently kindly. He reminded me much 
of Prince Dondoukoff, Governor-General of Caucasus, of whom he 
is a great friend. He was himself governor-general of that vast 
province for eighteen years, during which time and under his 
command such vast strides were made by Russia in Asia. He 
captured Khiva and other important provinces, and, I think, has 
some powder stains on his face, perhaps gained in battle. His 
bearing and appearance are somewhat severe, but he was so 
unaffectedly plain in his conversation with me, that I quite lost 
sight of the fact that he was the brother of the late, and uncle to 
the present, czar. He informed me that he was President of the 
Imperial Council, and gave me some information as to that power- 
ful arm of the government. All measures proposed by ministers 
have to be passed upon by it before presentation to the emperor. 
At present it consists of about 50 members — appointed by the 
emperor — but is rarely full at its meetings. 

He and the two princesses seemed much pleased that my talis- 
manic " Ya Amerikanets " had proved an "open sesame" to so 
many places of interest, and remarked that Russia and America 
were old friends, and then informed me that the daughter of our 

minister was betrothed to Baron . Something the princess 

said was rather an interrogation as to whether I was not pleased 
by the news. I frankly acknowledged that, on general principles, 
I was opposed to these alliances ; that we Americans were all 
sovereigns, and held ourselves as the equals of the greatest by 



492 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

birth of all lands, conceding superiority only to those who had 
won it by individual merit; but that our fair daughters, when in- 
termarried with European nobility, invariably, so far as I had 
heard, forgot their American characteristics and became intensely 
imbued with exclusiveness, and that, moreover, it was only our 
gilded belles who rang themselves into titled houses. The young 
princess — who, by the way, has a jolly German face, and would, I 
think, hugely enjoy the freedom of an American girl— smiled 
audibly at this. The prince informed me that this match, he 
thought, was one of love, and the Princess of Baden added that 
the young lady was a nice girl, and had been very kindly received, 
just before leaving for America, by the empress. The son of the 
duke is only ig, over six feet three — the tallest but one of the 
imperial family. I was mistaken in thinking the emperor very 
fat. One of the party said : *' It is simple meat and muscle, not 
fat. He is a very powerful man physically." Something being 
said of our splendid voyage about the world, I told the princess, 
who asked if it did not fatigue me, that I was a very young man. 
"Yes," she said, "a man is as old as he feels; a woman, as she 
looks." " True, your highness. I am 32 and the rise. You are ' 
just 18." The bright and handsome mother of the handsome 
grown daughter was not displeased by the compliment, and the 
grand duke rejoined : "And I am exactly 25 without the rise." 
At another time, when we were steaming up the magnificent 
approach to Sweden's capital, I said : " You, of course, have been 
here before?" "Yes, 50 years ago," adding with a laugh, " 25 
years before I was born." For the benefit of our young men I 
will state that the captain informed Willie that this straight, well 
preserved old soldier threw off the soft mattress from his bunk 
and slept without a pillow. 

The sail from Helsingfors to Stockholm is a very pretty one ; 
-always, except for two or three hours at night, through islands by 
the hundreds, if not by the thousands — some bald-headed, 
rounded, granite masses of rock, smoothly washed throughout 
countless ages, without a shrub or a lichen, others green and well 
wooded ; some small, others of considerable size, with small farms 
and fishing villages ; now we would be in little lakes of 100 or so, 
and then of several thousand acres in size •, then threading through 
narrow creeks athwart which the steamer could not lie lengthwise. 
Sometimes we would see a windmill whirling upon a high ground, 
and then we would catch the masts of a small ship riding in a 
creek beyond an island, but looking as if the bare poles were a 
part of the wooded land. The large groups of the Aland Isles 
belong to Finland. Then, crossing an open sea, we entered the 
Swedish islands, which are fairly without number and continuous 
to the coast. The Baltic last winter, as it frequently is, was 
frozen solidly over, and sleds passed from coast to coast. Quite 
a number of English ships were abandoned in the ice. Hardy 



THE APPROACH TO STOCKHOLM. 493 

Finns, wandering on the frozen sea, took possession of them and 
gained 60,000 kronas as salvage when the winter ended. 

The approach to Stockholm from the east is simply magnificent 
— through creeks and little bays, winding and bending; through 
wooded lands and islands, 50 to 150 feet high, with villas and 
fortresses, pretty boat-houses and ornamental landings, summer 
resorts and permanent houses, among ships and fishing-smacks, 
steamers and steam barges, all at this time showing more or less 
bunting, and bright with banners in honor of the Russian duke, 
whose coming was evidently expected. People waved handker- 
chiefs from landings and from water cottages. This latter, how- 
ever, seems a Finnish and Swedish custom. On the lakes and in 
the country where our steamboats and trains would pass, women 
and children almost invariably waved their handkerchiefs to 
passing boats and cars. At first I supposed it was for friends 
aboard, but was told it is universal and a way of showing their 
general good-fellowship ; but to our steamer the attention was far 
more than usual and very demonstrative. The grand duke came 
to the front and was evidently pleased by the reception. He had 
informed me before that the Crown Princess of Sweden was his 
niece, he being married to the sister of the Grand Duke of Baden, 
and that the Princess of Baden now aboard was the niece of the 
Baden ruler; that they were paying his niece a visit, and then he 
was going to the Transcaucasus to spend a couple of months on 
some large possessions he has there, and where four of his children 
were born. 

At the beautiful granite quay, quite in the city of Stockholm, 
we found a large concourse of people gathered. An open space, 
250 by 50 feet, was surrounded by soldiers or policemen, and in 
the centre stood the crown prince and princess awaiting their 
guests. I told the duke of my mistake in looking at the Sultan 
through my opera glasses and asked if it would be a breach of eti- 
quette here. He laughed and said he would use them if he were 
in my place, and I did. The crown prince is a tall, slight young 
man, with full, dark, but not heavy beard, a rather pleasant face, 
but by no means a strong one. He rather stood back, while his 
wife stepped forward to greet and talk to her kinswomen on the 
deck of the steamer while it was being tied to. She is tall, 
elegantly formed, with a very pretty — perhaps beautiful — face, 
the strength, however, rather detracting from its beauty. She was 
exquisitely clad in a close-fitting overdress, showing admirably her 
fine form, I never saw a more graceful figure, and the face was 
full of animation — indeed of sweetness — while she inquired as to 
the voyage. The prince himself would be called by our boys 
rather la-di-da. If the next generation of Swedish kings be 
strong men, they will inherit the strength from their handsome 
Baden mother. When the gang-plank was thrown out for 
the royal party to come aboard the sailors were laying a 



494 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN. 

carpet for them to walk upon. The prince, however, im- 
mediately walked with the princess aboard, motioning to 
the sailors to leave off the carpet ; and when he entered his 
carriage with the duke he walked to the outer side and opened the 
door himself before the flunkey could get to it. The crown 
princess rode away in a splendid carriage with the Princess of 
Baden and her daughter. The prince followed in another with the 
grand duke and his son, the two elder guests taking the right-hand 
seats. There was no cheering whatever, but a silent and very 
respectful reception. I am told this is considered here the 
proper etiquette when the royal family appear in a private 
manner, and that even on public occasions any hurrah is very 
feeble. 

The pride of the Swede in his capital city is certainly deserved. 
Every visitor says it is one of the handsomest cities in Europe. 
I think it is decidedly the most beautiful. Indeed, it would be 
hard to say what more it requires. It may be said to sit upon 
islands, for even the portions which are a part of the main-land 
are so nearly surrounded by water that they seem insulated. The 
sea comes up to it through a mass of islands almost touching the 
promontories sent down by the main. The channels through 
these, though of great depth generally, are very narrow, the main 
one, capable of admitting an armed ship, being less than lOO feet, 
wide. These islands and headlands lift 50 to nearly 200 feet, no- 
where leaving any plain or flat surface. The old town was upon 
three or four islands, but now the great bulk of the city is on the 
promontories of the main-land ; but these are so irregular in 
shape and so nearly surrounded by water that one has to make 
long detours to reach points desired, or to take boat for a near 
cut. We saw fire-wagons tearing at night across a square at a 
break-neck pace ; the young men with me followed them to 
see the blaze. I stood still on a bridge and soon saw the illumi- 
nation in the very direction the wagons had come from, and not 
far off. They had a detour of a mile or more to make, and my 
young companions had a long run. What is called the ring-line 
of street railway makes many zigzag bends in and out and over 
bridges to get around the town. Water permeates the city in 
every direction. Here in channels 100 feet wide, there widening 
into a broad stream 200 yards across ; here in little creeks running 
up into the granite hills, there in rounded little bays — water clear 
and transparent, but deliciously green and cool-looking. The 
streams are crossed by bridges, some of them very elegant struc- 
tures, and plying on them in every direction, across, and up and 
down, and diagonally, are the prettiest of little steam barges, 
some holding scarcely a dozen people, others 50 or more, running 
to and fro, in and out, like water-bugs on woodland fountains, and 
carrying passengers at eight tenths of a cent and up to six cents, 
according to the distance run. These creeks, streams, and bays 



A VIEW OF STOCKHOLM. 495 

are walled in by solidly built granite quays in massive smooth 
masonry, against which lie the small steamboats plying the lake, 
and large steamers from the sea, and are filled with pure water, 
coming down in green flood and rapid current from Lake Malaren, 
which drains a large country, into which it pushes in many-armed 
and irregular forms over 100 miles. The outflowing channels are 
too rapid and shallow for the craft which ply the lake. To 
remedy this, one of the narrow branches is locked so as to lift the 
larger lake-going vessels up from the sea level. The sea can be 
reached directly, or by going up the lake and toward the interior 
for many miles, where a deep canal joins one of the arms with a 
ragged fiord, which leaves the salt water a half degree south of 
the city and penetrates deep into the country. 

Water is, perhaps, Stockholm's most attractive feature, and 
permeates it in so many ways that it is called by some the Venice 
of the North ; but added to this are the solidly built houses, 
climbing some of the hills upon narrow, zigzag streets in con- 
fused, picturesque mass. One height is reached by a lofty street 
elevator," lifting in airy, open ironwork 150 to 200 feet high, 
with a light iron bridge reaching far over housetops on slender 
columns, resting like scaffolding against the sky. In other 
localities are elegant streets bending about in comfortable width, 
or in stretches of a quarter of a mile, with parkways nicely 
planted in shrubs and flowers, and all perfectly paved and lined 
with noble buildings generally four stories high and in good 
architectural style ; and then there are squares with fine statues 
and flanked by public buildings of handsome proportions. The 
city possesses a splendid park of 1,000 or more acres surrounded 
by water and beautifully hilly, and many small parks, gardens, 
and squares, scattered about the town, prettil}'^ laid out with 
monuments and fountains in bronze, and beautifully planted in 
trees and shrubs clothed in rich green. In some of these gardens 
are elegant cafes, brilliantly lighted at night, where excellent 
bands play until the witching hour of midnight, and gay people sit 
or stand about and flirt. By the way, flirtation is very common, 
and, I am sorry to add, statistics show it to be not of the most 
harmless kind. 

I was in Stockholm in 1875, and was so charmed with it that I 
advised some of its citizens to have a glass case built over it to 
preserve it exactly. I am glad my advice was not followed, for 
the city has grown to over 210,000, and has been greatly im- 
proved ; and some of the newer streets have been laid out with 
handsomely parked esplanades and built up with houses sur- 
passed by those in few capitals. The royal palace is a huge and 
not bad-looking quadrangle, with fine state apartments, but in no 
way differing enough from the conventional palace to deserve a 
description. Outside of Russia a traveller can see the interior of 
one regal palace and know them all. Those of the czars are sui 



496 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

generis, and each worth an examination. The royal museum has 
some very fine works of art, some of the statues and paintings 
being good. There are some, however, hardly fit for a royal collec- 
tion. I made a funny blunder in the museum. I saw a good 
many really fine paintings marked " Okant." I reached the con- 
clusion that Mr. Okant was a Swedish artist of some merit and of 
great industry. But finally seeing he was the painter of religious 
and historic subjects, of humorous and solemn moods, of figures, 
and of landscapes, it suddenly dawned on my brain that " Okant " 
meant " unknown." My mistake reminded me of the honesty of 
the Swedish character. They acknowledge ignorance of the 
artists of some fine pieces, which in most countries would have 
been ascribed to well known masters whom they best fitted, and 
thereby had their value enhanced. 

The Swedes do not strike me as being a very cheerful or par- 
ticularly bright-tempered people, nor yet are they solemn. They 
seem rather phlegmatic and even in their temperament. They 
are generally well dressed and are exceedingly neat in garb and 
in their household surroundings. We spent some hours in the 
" Deer Garden," the great park of the city, where the masses were 
spending the Sunday afternoon and evening. We saw lovers 
walking, crowds at games, several groups dancing, and many 
pic-nicking. All seemed quiet ; there was no sort of boisterous- 
ness and but little light-hearted gayety and fun. Even the groups 
of dancers seemed rather to be getting through with the figures 
than to be circling in real joy. This was the case even when the 
figures required forfeits. The kissing was given without boister- 
ous jollity, and lacked that wild joy when happy souls dance on 
two pairs of meeting lips. In cafes and restaurants there is quiet 
— none of that loud-toned abandon which marks the Teuton's 
gatherings. The Germans, when thoroughly enjoying themselves, 
talk and vociferate loudly, as if wholly forgetful of every thing 
but the jolly, present moment, and of everybody else. 

By the way, I was particularly struck with the quiet, low tones 
in which Russians converse. We saw them in all sorts of crowds, 
and rarely did we ever hear voices raised to a high pitch. 
This was the case even when we knew they were feeling the effect 
of exhilaration. The Finns are much like them in this respect, 
and the Swedes so to a considerable extent. So far the Swedes 
appear to me to be pretty well ofT. We have seen no beggars 
anywhere. 

There is considerable complaint that America is drawing out of 
the land its best bone and sinew, and I am told that there is in high 
quarters a disposition to stop emigration, if they knew how to 
bring it about. The same feeling exists in Finland. High taxes 
are driving its people away very rapidly. In both countries, just 
now, emigration is said to nearly counterbalance natural increase 
of population. And in both there is much waste land which with 
low taxes could come into productiveness. 



THE PEOPLE OF STOCKHOLM. 497 

I spent a part of a morning attending the congress of the 
Young Men's Christian Association. I paid my crown for ad- 
mission into the gallery. It was presided over by a very promi- 
nent German, and had several distinguished delegates. Speeches 
were made in English, German, and French — the substance of 
each being then given in languages other than the one used by 
the speaker. I understood them well enough to consider them 
quite good. The ablest was read by the president, but, as all 
read addresses do, elicited much less applause than feebler efforts 
extempore. I was struck by the fact that a large number of the 
young men were gray-haired, and many had but little hair to tell 
its color, and a very few were really young. The Bible was 
extolled by the speakers as the surest guide to its own truths. 
I regretted I could not remain another day to join the associa- 
tion on an excursion to which I was invited by our John V. 
Farwell, a delegate. Many of the delegates are learned men and 
deserve a successful meeting. My newly made acquaintance, 
Prof. Torpelius, the Finnish author, was in attendance. 

Willie says there are a great many pretty girls in Stockholm, but 
that their shoes look as if made for very large girls — the fault, I 
suppose, of the shoemakers, and not of the feet of the pretty 
blondes. Some of the peasant costumes now worn in the city by 
attendants in the museum and by girls who run little row-boats 
are very bright and pretty. Our newly promoted minister, Mr. 
Magee, was very polite to us, as he is to all Americans. 

I got rid in Stockholm of one of my unpleasant reminders of 
an unpleasant past. In 1884 I stumped the State of Illinois with 
terrific energy to make a president of the United States. I was 
on my feet over ten ten-hour days in nine weeks, and was 
whipped from one end of the State to the other. I broke my 
voice and injured my health, taking so many medicaments for my 
throat that some of my gums receded from my teeth. Up near 
the Arctic circle we had to eat jerked reindeer. Some of the salt 
meat got into a cavity in the gum, about a wisdom tooth, causing 
me much pain for ten days. I left my reminder in the iron grip 
of a dentist in the Swedish capital. I wonder if I had saved 
that " bone " four and a quarter years ago if it would not have 
been a wiser thing. As the wisdom tooth had then added little 
or nothing to my stock of wisdom, I now the more willingly let 
it go. 

I finish this at Christiania, whither the run by rail from Stock- 
holm was a charming one. It is generally made by tourists by 
the " express," making the distance nearly all by night. We, as 
we generally do, travelled only by day, and were amply repaid for 
the extra time. There was no grand scenery, but a great deal 
which was very pretty ; and we saw much of Swedish farming 
and something of the customs of the country people. Now we 
were in lands thickly wooded with pines and birch. The straight 
branchless pines would spin and waltz around each other as the 



498 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

train rushed through them, or deeply green firs would make a 
dense shade. A break would now occur in the woods, revealing 
a glimpse of a quiet lake, or we would skirt one of the pretty 
placid sheets, when red farm-houses and waving fields were mir- 
rowed on its silvery surface. Then a broad, rolling plain would 
be spread out before us, with a hundred farms and well-fenced 
fields, waving in freshly green oats and unbearded wheat, or 
covered thickly with tall shocks of newly cut rye, like tents in a 
pigmy camping-ground. Men and women were cutting tall timo- 
thy and red-topped clover, or throwing it into rounded domes, 
and the whole air was redolent of new-mown hay. Cattle grazed 
meekly in meadows from which the grass had been mown, and 
looked sleek and contented 

Many of the landscapes were exquisitely homelike, cheerful, 
and abounding in and running over with peacefulness. I know of 
no American home scenery so pretty, and but few in England to 
surpass some of the spots we passed over. Lakes were never 
long absent, and some of them beautiful. The farm-houses were 
all painted in red and many of the barns and out-houses ; not a 
flashy, dazzling red, but of a soft and almost neutral tint. I sus- 
pect the tone has been borrowed from the lichen tint which 
covers so many of the granite boulders in the shaded pine lands 
of this far north. I have seen some so red that it was difficult to 
believe them not painted with the brush. Oftentimes, too, the 
natural surface of stones built into fences along the road looks as 
if a painter had cleaned his brush upon their old, water-worn 
faces. I spoke before of the gray moss covering huge granite 
boulders, but I forgot to mention the beautiful lace-pattern variety 
or lichen which often mantles many of those scattered over the 
damp, wooded lands up toward the arctic circle. No elaborate 
embroidered handkerchief could be more regularly and delicately 
worked by woman's nimble fingers than some of these nature's 
woven fabrics upon . the cold, gray monsters dropped by the 
glaciers of a far-off past. They are generally circular, from one to 
two feet in diameter, and have, when full grown, three rows of 
embroidery, each about an inch and a half deep. They look as if 
fairies had spread their choicest lace treasures upon the stones to 
dry. They are seen all over this northern land, but we saw the 
most perfect about the 67th parallel. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

NORWAY— MAGNIFICENT SCENERY— TRUSTFUL PEOPLE — PLEAS- 
ING SIMPLICITY— PRETTY LOG HOUSES— FARMING IN 
NORWAY— GLACIERS AND WATERFALLS. 

Christiaiiia^ September 8, t888. 

I ONCE heard a Norwegian and a Swede in jocular dispute, 
which became a little bitter when the latter declared he " never 
could understand what the Lord made Norway for ; that it was 
nothing but a mass of rocks." The Norseman replied that it was 
made to grow men in, as Sweden had found more than once to 
her cost. The retort was patriotic and justified by the sturdy 
valor of the Norseman since he first appeared among men as 
the twin brother of the northern blast, and was supposed to live 
in ice grottos about the pole. But as a nursery of men, Norway 
has hardly been sufficiently prolific to justify the fearful throes 
borne by Dame Nature when she gave it birth. Every acre came 
from the very bowels of the earth, and every rood was torn from 
its heart in volcanic agony. Three weeks spent in rapidly run- 
ning over its mountains and through its valleys ; looking up upon 
its snow fields and mighty glaciers ; looking down into its dark 
gorges and fathomless fiords ; skimming along its green waters 
and under its towering precipices and beetling crags ; listening to 
the wild songs of its countless water-falls and the roar of its cata- 
racts ; breathing the sweet breath of the pines on the mountain 
side and braced by the cool, health-giving atmosphere everywhere 
found, — all convinces me that " Norge " might have been, if it was 
not, intended for a continental or world's park, where Nature can 
be communed with when in her grandest moods; where a man 
can come close up to her, can be cuddled to her heart, and be 
nursed upon her very lap ; where the noblest features of the 
world are heaped together within comparatively small compass, 
and can be looked upon without danger, and visited with simple, 
invigorating labor. 

Nature practised her hand in many latitudes and in most dis- 
tant regions before she laid Norway out. In exalted mood she 
lifted Everest and Kunchinjinga to the skies, but threw about 
them such mighty foot-hills, such vast buttresses of ice, that 
their crowned brows can only be gazed at from afar, and any 
attempt at intimacy is repelled with awful doom. Elbruz and 

499 



Soo A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Kazbek are thrown with silvered domes upon a background of 
purest, cerulean hue ; around them are clustered monarchs cast 
in majestic mould, with valleys and slopes between, where fairies 
delight to dwell and flowers are ever in bloom ; but to reach these 
sceptred kings vast plains must be traversed beneath the scorch- 
ing sun. " Old Mt. Blanc " was reared in fearful majesty, and 
^' The Maiden " pierces the clouds with her tresses of all un- 
touched white, but to revel in their glories one must climb to 
alpine heights, and many a votary of the one sleeps in unrecord- 
ing ice, and lovers of the other are wrapped in winding sheets of 
snow. Having tried her hand in the plastic art, with fingers all 
deft and with practised eye, old Nature wandered from southern 
climes toward the upper pole and lifted from the sea the north- 
land, an epitome of all grandeur, a crystallized photograph of all 
beauty, a fixed reflection of all charms — glorious " Norge ! " 

Her mountains lift not by the tens of thousand feet through 
plains and hills which have swallowed up half of their vast alti- 
tude, the remainder to be attained only by the most daring and 
hardy, but springing from the world's great level, the eternal 
ocean, while appearing as lofty as the highest to the beholder, 
they may be reached by the maiden's tiny feet and by the old 
man's faltering step. Far off from a burning sun, the accumu- 
lated snows of countless ages flow in glazier currents, measured 
not by acres, but by the hundred square miles — glaciers, compared 
with which the Mer de Glace, of Chamouni, is as a fish-pond by 
the side of an inland sea. The great Jostedals Brae covers an 
area of 500 square miles, and sends many an arm nearly down to 
the sea, as if it would bathe its frozen fingers in the warm stream 
sent by our own gulf to temper the winds to this northern clime. 

We have now travelled about 950 miles in this wonderful land 
— 530 of them by posting in " stolkjarre," " kariol," and carriage 
over mountains and through beautiful narrow valleys ; 220 odd on 
little steamers and barges over crystal lakes and wonderful fiords, 
and the remainder in slow-running railroad trains. We have 
travelled too rapidly for simple enjoyment. That is, we have 
taken but little time for rest and have not halted to dream. I 
have wasted so much of my life heretofore that I must, like the 
busy bee, lay up a store for honeyed dreams in my soon-to-come 
old age. We have exercised our legs, and backs too, and have 
kept our eyes open and our ears unstuffed with cotton. I will 
now attempt to give some very sage conclusions about men and 
things here. All of these conclusions I shall be ready to change 
when shown they are wrong. I always claimed the right of 
changing my mind. It is only the fool who boasts that he never 
does. Your inconsistent man is often a very wise man. He 
learns enough to-day to know that he was wrong yesterday. 

I like the Norwegians. All travellers here declare them per- 
fectly honest. I certainly have not seen the slightest disposition 



THE NOR WEGIANS. 5 o i 

on the part of any one of them to deceive or cheat, and if trust- 
fulness be an evidence of honesty they are wonderfully so. They 
have huge keys to their store-houses and granaries — keys big 
enough to brain a man with. These huge keys are nearly always 
in the keyhole or hanging somewhere within reach of one feloni- 
ously inclined. At wayside stations curiosities — sometimes of 
small silverware — are exposed in the unattended public room, 
where any one could easily carry them off. Cigars are in open 
boxes for the traveller to help himself from, with the expectation 
that he will honestly account for any he has taken. Farm-houses 
are left open when the whole family goes off to the mountain to 
cut hay, and in some unfrequented localities the wayfarer goes in, 
builds a fire, goes to the store-room, helps himself to milk and 
" flat-broed," cooks, and eats a meal, and leaves on the table 
money enough to pay for what he has used. Frequently a post- 
boy (he is sometimes a man and not infrequently a girl or woman) 
has taken what I have paid for his dues, putting it into his pocket 
without counting. He always, however, sees what you give him 
as gratuity, and warmly shakes you by the hand when he says 
" tak " (thanks). I gave a servant girl too much for our dinner. 
She seemed much amused, when she corrected my error, that I 
should have made such a blunder. At wayside stations they 
charge ridiculously low prices, and as far as I can learn make no 
distinction in making the reckoning to foreigners and to home 
people. They are a sturdy, fine-looking people, and are the most 
thorough democrats on the face of the globe. They have abol- 
ished all titles and nobility, and have not learned to worship 
wealth. One man is quite as good as another, and his bearing 
shows he thinks so. He takes off his hat when he meets a 
traveller on the roadside, but does it as freely to the coachman 
who drives as to the rich man who lolls back in the carriage. He 
has high respect for his pastor and for the patriarchal head of a 
family. He is, however, frequently a dissenter, and shows no 
disposition to pay church rates, and in that case wastes no great 
amount of love upon the pastor who is placed over him by the 
government. The Lutheran Church is the established one of the 
land, and the livings are in the gift of the authorities. 

They are a good-natured people I am sure. The kitchen is the 
living room in a well-to-do farm-house. I have walked into these 
frequently, and generally found the mother putting the finishing 
touches to the pot when preparing a meal ; and I could never tell 
which were the daughters of the house and which the servants. 
By the way, the latter are not ashamed of their calling, and when 
I asked a pretty one if she were the daughter, she said, with a 
smile : " Oh, nei, I am a servant." Many of the women in the 
mountains and upper valley are very comely — not beauties, but 
ruddy, rosy, plump, and healthy specimens of femininity. If I 
should write verses I would not write them to " The q;irl with the 



502 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

raven locks," nor to "The flaxen-haired maiden," nor yet to "The 
red-haired girl," but just now would write a sonnet to " The sweet 
girl of the tow head." 

The women do their full share of the work of the land, but we 
have found the heavy labor is done by the men. The women 
reap and bind grain and rake and mow hay. The men, however, 
wield the axe and the scythe. All grass is cut, however light, and 
often a very quick, sharp stroke is necessary to shave it off. For 
this sort of hay, a scythe a little over a foot long, with a handle 
less than two feet in length, is used. The stroke is as sharp and 
quick as it would be if the mower were taking the head off a 
snake. We have seen nowhere the double-action scythe used in 
Finland. There a long-handled implement is wielded first to the 
right and then to the left, with a rapidity and evenness of action 
simply marvellous. I do not think the Norwegians good farmers. 
They plow or dig their fields well and deep, but their barley and 
oat fields have nearly as much weeds as grain. They harvest close 
to the ground, so as to save every weed and spear of grass. 
Nothing which grows but is saved for hay, and the cows and 
sheep eat any and every thing. Even the potato vines are hung 
up to dry for fodder, and leaves of birch and elm are cured and 
stacked for winter use. Horses do not eat leaves unless sorely 
pressed. Grain ripens here very slowly, and is often cut thoroughly 
green. This is more than usually the case this year, for the season 
is nearly three weeks later than ordinarily. I saw barley being 
harvested in the mountains perfectly green and with heads not 
half filled. They know not what night frost may come. Barley 
up in Finland matures in eight or nine weeks ; here it frequently 
fails to do so in four months, and never in less than three. 

All grain and hay is hung up to dry and cure. Each valley and 
locality differs somewhat from the next one in the mode adopted. 
- This shows how conservative people are — each following the 
example of his forefathers. There is something pleasing to me in 
this respect for the ideas of the past — so different from our land, 
where the old is ever discarded and the new taken up. I have 
almost learned to like the Chinese for worshipping their ancestors. 
It is better than with us, where Young America generally thinks 
his father an old fossil. In the Gudbransdal — valley of Gud- 
brand there are old homesteads which make one almost feel he is 
being carried back a few hundred years to the old English halls, 
without the pomp of baronial power and mastership. There is 
the old tall clock, the old cupboard in the corner, old tables and 
other old traps of long ago, and the old man with his pipe and his 
children and laborers about the great kitchen in full and free 
equality. Yet the old man's will and word is the law of his little 
realm and is implicitly obeyed. 

Real estate is held upon a singular tenure. A man may dispose 
of it as he pleases, but the next in succession has the right to 



LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN CITIES. 503 

demand to be the purchaser, even from the vendee who had paid 
in full, and he has several years within which to reach his deter- 
mination, so that an interloper cannot know for some years 
whether he is the owner or not. This virtually prevents free 
disposal, and the next in succession usually feels a pride in holding 
to the old farm. To enable him to buy out his mother and sisters 
he goes into debt, and his life then becomes one of drudgery for 
the benefit of the mortgagee. The farmer has to keep up the 
roads along his land. This burthen with others keeps him poor, 
and many seek relief in emigration. If I be not mistaken, the 
number leaving the country, both here and in Sweden, is more 
than one to three of the births. This very much annoys the govern- 
ment and causes it to discourage emigration as much as possible. 
I am not anxious to have increased emigration to our land. We 
are filling up too fast, but no better population could go to our 
shores than the hardy sons of Scandinavia. 

I had, until coming here, been of the impression that the Nor- 
wegians were hard drinkers. It was probably so once, but is no 
longer the case. I have seen but two men under the influence of 
liquor ; one was an excursionist on a railway, the other an 
Englishman on a steamer. The people ascribe the improvement 
to two things — first, the prohibition against selling any liquor 
from five o'clock Saturday afternoon to nine o'clock Monday 
morning, and to the peculiar regulation of dram shops in towns 
and cities. The traffic in Christiania is under the control of a 
syndicate of gentlemen, who own and run the saloons, reserving 
only five per cent, of the profits for themselves, and turning the 
balance over to the city. Coffee, beer, and liquors are served in 
one room and sandwiches in another. No man is permitted to sit 
down in the establishment, or to take more than one drink of 
liquor or more than a half-bottle of beer at a single visit. The 
beer of the land is good and cheap. It is decidedly the beverage 
of the people, and so far as my observation extends in the cities 
and in the country, sobriety is a national characteristic. Bad 
liquor does more harm than much liquor. If the prohibitionists 
would only preach a crusade against poison as a beverage, and 
would make the wilful manufacture and sale of adulterated liquors 
and beer a penitentiary offence, I believe I would agree to be their 
candidate for the presidency. But it will not do for them to stop 
a man from making a simon-pure old Bourbon or a canoe of pure, 
cooling lager. That is a blow at the natural liberties of free men. 

Apropos of presidential candidates, I hear some of our fellows 
are poking fun at Ben because his ancestor was drawn, hung, and 
quartered. They must not attack the family record. Remember 
John Brown was hung, but his soul goes marching on. Ben's 
family are very good people, even if one ancestor was a crop-head ; 
and besides the lusty old fellow helped to teach the Anointed of 
the Lord that royal necks and sharp steel had affinities. 



504 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

I said all grain and grass was hung up to dry. This is. some- 
times done on " hesjies," long racks — posts set in the ground, 
about six feet high, with five or six tiers of slender poles or lines 
stretching between them — a sort of five-deck clothes-lines. 
These are sometimes several hundred feet long, and when there 
are several rows one behind another and well filled, look at a 
distance like compact companies of infantry, and when close by 
and covered with short, green grass resemble well-trimmed quick- 
set hedges. The more general plan, however, is to hang the grass 
or grain on "corn-stals." These are sticks, eight to ten feet high, 
set into the ground, with cross-pins for grass but smooth for 
grain. The sheaves of grain are so hung upon these that the 
heads all bend toward the sunny side, and look not unlike a 
woman's massive tresses flowing over her shoulders and down her 
back. The little fields, often of less than a quarter of an acre, 
scattered over the mountain slopes or in larger sizes in the 
smiling valleys, with these tall " corn-stals " scattered over them, 
make a charming landscape. The Norwegian farmers like the 
Finns and the Swedes, do not live in villages and clustered 
hamlets, but each on his individual farm. I have an idea that this 
gives a feeling of independence and a love of real liberty. People 
in villages become more or less dependent. The man who lives 
alone grows to be self-reliant and loves elbow-room. It is among 
such that civil liberty takes deepest root. The necessity of 
housing all cattle and all provender during the long winter 
months makes very large barns or many buildings necessary to 
each farmstead. The farmer whose whole arable land does not 
exceed a dozen or two acres, has eight or ten — and often more — 
buildings closely gathered about his residence. The larger farms 
do not increase the number of these buildings so much as they 
increase the size of each. In some of the mountain districts, 
where the whole tillable lands of a homestead are not greater 
than one of our market gardens, the out-houses are often so tiny 
that one could almost imagine they were put up as toys, rather 
than for the earnest necessities of a hard life. 

In some of the richer and broader valleys, the barns are com- 
modious structures which would do credit to a Pennsylvania 
Dutch farmer ; all buildings throughout the land we have visited, 
except in Christiania, are of logs, generally well hewn, sometimes 
sawed, with prettily carried up corners, and fitting closely to- 
gether upon a calking of fine moss, and with lapping eaves and 
projecting gable roofing; very pretentious ones are boarded over. 
The roofs in the south and about the fiords are of red bent tiles; 
in one or two large valleys, of huge slabs of slate ; but generally 
throughout the country, of six or eight inches of turf laid upon 
an under-roofing of birch bark. These turf roofs in this rainy 
country are green with emerald moss or growing grass, and many 
of them with bushes of pine, mountain ash, or birch growing in 



LOG-HOUSES AND STABBURS. 505 

healthy thrift from four to even 15 feet in height, so that a man 
may truly be said to live under his own roof-tree. I counted 18 
young trees, none of them under three feet in height, and two or 
three over ten feet, on the roof of a house 30 x 20 feet. The 
grass on some of the houses was fit for the scythe. On one was 
a large patch of pansies, and many were white with wild marga- 
rites. Painted houses, except about large towns, are the excep- 
tion. Many receive, when first put up, a washing of thin tar. 
These latter left untouched are soon exquisitely tinted by time 
and the weather, and wear most artistic hues. Nearly every 
cluster of farm buildings has its " stabbur," or store-house, lifted 
upon low bevelled posts, up which mice and other rodents cannot 
climb. In some localities these stabburs are the farmer's 
pride, and are exceedingly pretty. On bevelled posts two feet 
high is erected a pretty log-house, say 10 x 15, and 10 feet high. 
Upon this rises a second story, projecting over the first four or 
five feet on all sides, and supported by brackets more or less 
elaborately carved. The upper story is then surmounted by a 
roof of green turf, projecting two to four feet. These erections 
are often the perfection of log architecture, and are set forward 
before the residences as \.\vq. pieces de resistance of beauty. They 
are generally painted red, or charmingly tinted by the weather, 
and when they are the accompaniments of a dozen or more ham- 
lets scattered over a mountain slope, are very picturesque, and 
look not unlike little Burmese temples. They may indeed be 
called the temples of the owners, for in them they store their 
cheese and butter, their groceries and barley meal, their seeds and 
little wealth of threshed grain. I saw one being erected, where 
the old carved brackets, of an older one rotted and pulled down, 
were being built into the new. The owner said the brackets were 
over 400 years old, and had adorned the store-houses of his ances- 
tors. The people take great pride in their old family relics, but 
are too democratic to erect monuments to their dead heroes, 
wherein they differ greatly from the Swedes, whose capital is 
filled with statues. We have not seen a half-dozen monuments 
in the land. All but two of these were to the engineers who built 
their magnificent roads. The exceptions were one to George Sin- 
clair, a Scotch adventurer, who led 900 of his countrymen into the 
heart of the country to assist the Swedes. Three hundred peas- 
ants collected over a pass he was to take, and, hurling stones and 
logs down upon the invaders, destroyed them all. A huge slab, 
with the commander's name and the date of his death, is erected 
near the roadside. I asked our coachman why the monument 
was erected to him. He replied : " Because he was killed." 
There was more wisdom in the answer than he dreamed of. 
Many a man goes down to fame simply because he was killed. 
A broken arm or a wooden leg takes a man to Congress or makes 
him a governor. A broken head and death-stroke makes him a 



5o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

hero and gives him a monument. How many thousands have 
lost their bright opportunity by not being killed at the right 
time ! The other exception mentioned was the statue to Chris- 
tian, the founder of the city, in Christiania. 

Norway has an area of 122,000 square miles — considerably 
more than twice as many as the State of Illinois — and yet she 
has only a little over 1,000 square miles of arable, cultivatable 
lands. About a fifth of her surface is covered by forests — not of 
large trees such as we consider valuable timber, but of close- 
grained pines, large enough for a European market, and of birch 
and other trees. The remaining land surface is all bald rocky 
heights and upper moorlands, with scanty grass for pasture and 
moss for reindeer, and snow-fields. She has a marvellous amount 
of running water well stocked with fish, and alm.ost fathomless fiords 
and interland channels teeming with the finny tribes of the deep. 
Her forests and fisheries have constituted her wealth in the past. 
Her magnificent scenery will go far toward feeding her population 
in the future. A few years ago her roads were only rough bridle- 
paths and foot trails. Now she has many of the best engineered 
and gravelled roads in the world, and is extending them to every 
point sought by the tourist. Thousands of foreigners seek health 
and pleasure here every summer. And each summer exceeds 
the preceding one by a heavy percentage. So many Englishmen 
come to it that it is called by some of them a suburb of London, 
and the language of John Bull is being picked up a little on every 
mountain side and in every valley, and along the great fiords of 
the west an American or Briton rarely needs an interpreter. 

The fjords or fiords are deep-sea creeks running far into the 
mountains inland on the whole coast, from the far north down to 
the border of Sweden. It was from them that the Vikings 
{creek kings) sallied forth to prey upon the richer people of Eng- 
land and the south. In some instances these creeks are over lOO 
miles long, from a half mile to four miles broad, and as deep as 
the outer sea. They ramify into countless arms, jagged and 
rough. On a topographical map they have been likened to the 
crooked trunk of a dead tree, with the larger gnarled branches 
projecting, but stripped of smaller limbs. These branches end in 
deep narrow valleys extending still farther inland, in which are 
long deep lakes on higher altitudes. These lakes occupy the 
beds of fiords, which extended back at some earlier period, before 
the country was lifted high above the sea. From the fiords huge 
mountains lift their precipitous heights 1,000 to 5,000 feet directly 
from the water, with here and there steep slopes, on which little 
patches of cultivated land mingle with the precipices. Gener- 
ally, however, the mountains rise at once in sheer precipices or in 
mighty rocks with little terraces, on which stunted trees find 
scanty foothold, or ledges green with light grass. 

Behind the mountains are upper plateaus, covered with glaciers 
and eternal snows. Over their crests pour water-falls, so far up 



MOUNTAINS AND WATER-FALLS. 507 

that they are lost in mist, to be again gathered into tumbling 
streams on lower rocky projections, or, having worn the rocky 
sides down into more gradual descents, they hang like silvery 
bands, 1,000 and 2,oo(3 feet long, on the frowning mass of granite. 
The mountains are of volcanic origin, and stand as they stood when 
first cooled off after being belched forth from the deep bowels of 
the earth, more or less modified by the action of water and frosts 
through countless ages. They lift in monster domes, rounded 
and bald-headed, smooth and nearly solid, and could they be seen 
from far-ofT heights, would appear as vast water-worn bowlders, 
strewn in irregular order on the face of the land. In one respect 
they make this one of the oldest parts of the earth ; that is, they 
are all composed of primary rocks, thrown up by the globe's 
-eternal fires, and bear upon themselves no secondary formation. 
In fact, however, I suspect this is one of the newest of lands, and 
is the creation of one of the world's latest cataclysms. This is 
evidenced, first, by the absence of overlying stratified rocks and 
clays, and yet more strikingly by the sharp lines and edges of 
monster fragmentary rocks, which often lie in Titanic masses as 
they fell down from the heights into gorges and narrow valleys, 
broken from their moorings by too rapid cooling. Vast piles of 
such fragments are often met with, piled like Ossa upon Pelion, 
into lofty hills. These great fragments are seen 200 or more feet 
in diameter, with edges as sharp as if they had been cleaved but 
yesterday, resting upon underlying monsters, with crevices as 
large as caves, or on points so small that a few strokes of a slender 
hammer would change the position of millions of tons. There 
are no pinnacles, needles, and horns to be seen in Norway piercing 
the skies, as in the Alps or in our own Rockies, but the tallest 
points present somewhat rounded crowns on the background of 
the sky. This is a land of water, of rushing torrents — torrents 
fed by upper snows and frequent rains, tumbling down mountain 
sides and dashing along valleys in rapidly falling masses, forming 
innumerable cascades over frightful precipices and countless 
water-falls in the valleys. Many of these are of wondrous beauty, 
but so constantly recurring that tourists become surfeited with 
their wild music and their filmy or foaming charms. 

The tree line ends at some 3,000 feet altitude, and the lofty 
heights of the mountains are clothed in heather or are naked and 
smooth in rock. Vast snow-fields lie on the upper plateaus, some 
congealed and pressed into glacier streams ; others descending in 
great stripes and bands in deep, rocky furrows, far down into the 
valleys, so that when once into the mountains, white robes and 
scarfs and ribbons are always visible about monster shoulders. 
The roads are splendidly engineered, built of disintegrated granite 
sands, or soft particles of somewhat flaky gneiss, smooth as a 
garden walk, and sloping from lofty heights in loops, bends and 
zigzags, along frightful precipices in charming convolutions, 
along which the mountain ponies trot or gallop with surefooted. 



5o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

brave, and never-flagging steadiness. There are few good-sized 
horses in Norway ; nearly all of the small ones are pony-built. 
They are fairly well formed, almost always tawny or dun more or 
less of a yellowish or whitish tinge. All have a dark streak of 
hair, beginning in the foretop, running through the middle of the 
mane, along the spine, and into the tail. Nearly all are prettily 
roached the two lighter sides of the mane being removed, leaving. 
a black or dark roach, even to a nearly white pony. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 

CHRISTIANIA— VIKING SHIPS— THE THELEMARKEN— THE FIORDS 

—CLIMATE OF NORWAY— SPLENDID ROADS— DELIGHTFUL 

TOURS— MOUNTAIN DAIRIES. 

Steamer Christiania, Septe?nber, 15, 1888. 

Now, having given a general survey of this pleasing country 
and its holdings, I will endeavor to draw a few pictures of the 
particular things seen and done in our rapid tour of three weeks. 
We commenced our inland journeyings at Christiania, going by 
rail some 50 miles southwestwardly to Kongsberg ; then by 
posting 190 miles in little spring carts, through smiling valleys 
and over bleak snowy mountain heights and passes to Odde 
on the southernmost arm of the great Hardanger Fiord ; thence 
through the arms of Hardanger on a little steamer and posting to 
the southernmost arm of the Sogner Fiord, which carries its almost 
fathomless salt waters a hundred and odd miles into the interior 
mountains; then on this briny inland creek to one of its northern 
landing-places ; and by post and over the crystal lakes on row- 
boats or little barges to the great Nord Fiord ; and again 
posting to the Sondmore, and over and along its branches 
twisting like a reptile through mighty pricipices 3,000 and 4,000 
feet high in the Geiranger and the Slyngs Fiords, and on- 
ward again by posting to the beautiful Molde Fiord and the 
picturesque town of Molde, — making in all 300 to 320 miles from 
Odde. By posting again nearly 200 miles through the deep 
gorges and frowning heights of the Romsdal, and over the 
pass and through the beautiful valley of Guldbrandsdal to Lille- 
hammer, and on the long and sweet lake of Mioesen about 65 
miles, and finally by rail 42 miles again to the capital, and finish- 
ing all on the fine steamer CJiristiaiiia of Copenhagen out of the 
Christiania Fiord, on which I am now writing. 

The ride, when entering Norway by rail from the frontier of 
Sweden, is spoken of by the guide-books as tame. This should 
be so understood as by comparison with the nobler scenery 
offered the traveller in other localities. It is ideally very pretty ; 
low mountains clothed in pines of foliage so dark that they seem 
almost black ; scattered farms with clusters of houses charmingly 
tinted by the weather, and fields green in light-colored oats, and 
well mown meadows, and little fields of rye mounted on tall, 

509 



5IO A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

closely planted " corn-stals," and patches of barley now beginning 
to yellow. Our track lay along a broad, flowing stream, with here 
and there large saw-mills, surrounded by huge piles of newly cut 
boards and great rafts of slender logs, with several pretty villages 
and towns and tasty houses. 

We found Christiania a fine, well-built city of 120,000 dwellers. 
Its general characteristic is that of substantial solidity without any 
pretentions to great elegance or beauty. Some of the public 
buildings are fine and the palace is imposing. The king, who 
was in the city when we arrived, or rather in its neighborhood, 
does not occupy it, and rarely even the bijou of a residence, Oscar's 
Hall, charmingly situated on the fiord near by. He was sojourn- 
ing in a log-house somewhere near by, I suppose thereby to flat- 
ter the democratic tastes of his Norse subjects. He goes about 
here with decided simplicity. These people have no great rever- 
ence for kings, and the present one's movements are much more 
unpretending than when in the sister kingdom. The union 
between Norway and Sweden is almost exclusively through the 
crown. In all things else Norway is an independent, separate 
kingdom. 

The museum is quite good, but the thing most attractive to us 
was the old viking ship. This is a keel about 85 feet long, with 
a pitched-roofed log-cabin, in which the bones of the old robber 
king were found. It was discovered buried a few years since in the 
sands, where it had lain for nearly or quite a thousand years. A 
dead king was buried in it with his horses and cattle, which were 
killed for him to feed on during his nethermost pilgrimage. The 
views about Christiania are fine, and the suburban residences of 
its better-to-do people very pretty. One of the prettiest is the 
1 50-years-old house of our kind consul, Mr. Gade. It has pretty 
grounds and handsome trees, and an exquisite garden. His 
beautiful American wife is, however, its best adornment. With a 
wealth of silvery hair, and rosy complexion, and the softest of 
dark eyes, she shows that a Maine girl lost nothing when she was 
transplanted to Norge to be the mother of two nearly grown 
children now finishing their education at Cambridge, Mass. He 
has been our consul for nearly eighteen years ; delights to show at- 
tention to Americans, and exhibits the book of my good old friend. 
Judge Caton, as his most valued treasure. I do not know but that 
he values the kind lines written on the fly-leaf even more than all 
of its valuable printed pages. 

The run by rail to Kongsberg is fine, through deep valleys, high 
upon mountain slopes overlooking deep gorges and sunny valleys, 
on which haymaking men and women stopped to wave their hand- 
kerchiefs to the passing train. Every one gives their salute to 
whirling train and panting steamer. In fact I have reached the 
conclusion that this article of apparel throughout the Northland 
is rather kept white for this purpose. The back of the hand is 



A TRIP THROUGH THELEMARKEN. 511 

much more used for nose-wiping. It is convenient, always handy, 
can be cleaned without ironing, and saves the rag. It is astonish- 
ing how long the Finns, Swedes, and Norse men and women can 
wave their napkins to parting friends. It makes us sometimes 
rather sigh when embarking that no one ever bids us good-bye. 
We have had no one to see us off since we left Seattle. We go 
aboard an ocean steamer as a sort of every-day affair and quit a land 
as coolly as the denizen of a city takes a horse-car. We have grown 
utterly cosmopolitan. The world is our home and all people are 
our brothers. We pass from one land to another as nonchalantly 
as most people turn a village corner ; we look back upon the 
masses we leave with kindly regard and silently bid them a long 
adieu. We then look forward to the next where we shall meet 
with generous welcome. The world is everywhere our oyster ; 
with courtesy and a silver knife we open the shell on every strand 
and eat of its juicy contents with heartful thankfulness to the 
Giver of all good gifts ; with kindness to all and malice to none, 
with forgetfulness that any were ever our harm-doers ; with hopes 
that all will be our well-wishers we think of the far-off land where 
real friends have stood by us in the past, with longing soon to be 
among them and to be better Americans and truer Chicagoans 
because we have been and ever will be citizens of the \yhole 
world. 

The Thelemarken district has not been much visited by tour- 
ists because its roads are of very recent date, and some two or 
three passes are yet so steep that one has to take a good many 
stiff walks to surmount them. But it was to us a succession of glo- 
rious experiences and views. Now we were in sweet valleys as 
pastorally beautiful and homelike as one could wish ; little waving 
fields and mowed lands so smooth and with trees so scattered along 
streams or in clustering copses that they looked like well-kept 
parks. Homesteads perched on steep mountain sides in gather- 
ings of a dozen out-houses with green moss or grass on their roofs 
and now and then with little trees growing far above the ridge- 
pole. Scarcely any tawdry or glaring in paint, but all sweetly 
tinted with that softest of all brushes— the weather, and by that 
truest of all artists — time ; beautiful stabburs, or store-houses, 
the treasure houses of the owners, fashioned with a taste only to 
be reached by the rounded log, exact corners, and widely over- 
hanging eaves, in the softest of neutral red, if painted, but gener- 
ally stained by the coloring of oozing pitch, helped perhaps by a 
thin coating of tar which time has wiped down as if with light blend- 
ing brushes dipped in dry burnt umber. We sometimes stopped at 
a plain farmer's station where we would have trout with sides 
studded with rubies, and with butter and milk scented and fra- 
grant from the sweet mountain grass cropped by the little cows, 
and waited upon by a nice Norwegian woman who seemed to care 
more for our praise of her good things, than for the small price in 



512 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

" kroner and acre " she would charge for the meal ; then our Httle 
horses — pony-built and compact, which do not know how to baulk, 
looking so docile and sensible, carrying us now on the very verge 
of a precipice and then almost on a jutting crag, and giving us a 
twinkle from their honest eyes as if saying " was that not a close 
shave?" These things were all pleasant helps to enjoyment. 

1 must not forget that horses are not tied and tethered by the 
head. The halter is fastened to one of the fore-feet instead. When 
a driver halts in town or country he fastens a cord from one fore- 
foot to one of the shafts. When cattle, horses, and even sheep, 
are tethered out to pasture it is done by the foot. It is amusing 
to see these educated animals reaching for an extra tuft of grass, 
standing on three feet while the fourth is stretched to the rope. 
The people and their cattle live on terms of the utmost intimacy 
and are perfect friends. A low word from the owner is enough to 
make a pony put forth his best exertions and a whip is rarely 
needed. A strange driver needs the whip and a good one. The 
boy stands or sits behind the traveller, and when he gets down to 
walk going up hill the pony pays no sort of attention to the trav- 
eller who drives, but when the boy mounts, off he trots before a 
word is spoken. The brightest post-boy I had was a woman who 
could jump up and down with the agility of a cat. And yet 
she had two sons in Minnesota ; one of them had been there 
seven years, thus showing she was no youngling. In my gallantry 
I wished to get down to open a gate. She objected ; I gave her 
to understand that I was quite young. She looked at my gray 
head with an incredulous grin. I reserved my gallantry after that 
for some more appreciative fair one and let her do the jumping. 

Our little boys were generally of the brightest and rosiest kind 
and took great pride in showing off their little stock of English ; 
and how thankful were they when they would shake us by the 
hand and give us a warm " tak " (thanks) for the 25 " aere " we 
would give as trink gelt. Once we stopped at an old wooden 
church curiously built in a sort of rising terraces of stained 
shingles. Some of its timbers were there as they were placed 
600 or 700 years ago. The good pastor of Hitterdal was most 
kind when he dismissed the class of some 20 maidens he was 
preparing for confirmation, and showed us his old treasures. 
Among other things he pointed to a sort of visitors' registry, 
on one of its earliest pages being the name of Napoleon, written 
by the Prince Imperial before he started off for cruel Zululand. 
The meek-looking young girls in neat black dresses, with black 
handkerchiefs on their heads seemed thoroughly to realize the 
solemn ceremony they were soon to pass through when uniting 
themselves thoroughly to the church. The peasant women wear 
usually a gown of dark or black coarse woollen stuff, with hand- 
kerchief, light or black, tied at the throat. 

At times our road lay along streams — now torrents with pretty 
falls, rushing through clefts in the rocks, and then spreading into 




'HITTERDAL" CHURCH, THELEMARKEN. 



FLATDAL A HAPPY VALLEY. 513 

laroad and placid streams ; quaint little saw- and grist-mills were 
frequently among the rocks about the falls, so small that one 
could almost take them for boy's toy mills. These mills are char- 
acteristic features throughout the land. They are always of logs, 
often not ten feet square, and usually covered with turf, all the 
greener for being within reach of the spray of the cataract whose 
fall turns their wheels. They are large enough for a set of stones, 
a little hopper and trough, and a barrel or two. Sometimes they 
are run by an outside over-shot wheel, though more frequently by 
a little wheel directly under the stones. At one place I counted 
1 1 little mill-houses, one after another, within 200 feet of each 
other, on a small mountain stream. Many a Norseman grinds 
his grain, sharpens his axe and scythe, turns his lathe, and cuts 
the hay and straw for his cattle by water. For the latter pur- 
pose a wire band is carried sometimes quite a distance from a 
water-wheel into the barn. Now and then one sees a grindstone 
whirling away, turned by its own separate tiny water-wheel not 
much larger than a boy's flutter-mill. 

Some of the mountains lifting from the valleys in the Thele- 
marken are of lofty grandeur and the precipices of fearful heights. 
We passed many mountain lakes, some of them high up near the 
eternal snows, and of depths almost unfathomable — 2,000 feet 
and upwards. Along these we would skirt under lofty precipices, 
over roads carved like galleries from the solid rock, and the 
mountains on the opposite side mirrored in the deep crystal 
water. After passing, one day, through a lofty pass between 
mighty, rocky buttresses, we emerged upon one of the most im- 
pressive scenes I have ever looked upon. Fifteen hundred feet 
below us lay a valley apparently perfectly level, about a half mile 
"wide and five or six miles long, with a farm-covered slope 1,000 
feet high spreading to our left and next us. The level valley was 
laid out in meadows cleanly mowed, in barley fields, just begin- 
ning to be built up in corn-stals, and in pea-green oat patches ; 
through its full length stretched a river some 50 or more feet 
wide and ending in a lake at the farther point ; scattered over it 
were clumps and clusters of trees gracefully and tastefully placed, 
as if planted for a royal park ; dotting the little plain here and 
there were a few farm-houses, while close under us was a hamlet 
and a spired church. The whole was bathed in a late afternoon 
sunlight, and was so warm and beautiful that I involuntarily ex- 
claimed, "Behold a happy valley." It was exquisitely beautiful; 
but when looking a little above our level, the scene ceased to be 
beautiful — it was at once one of majestic grandeur. On the right 
and left reared two huge bowlder-like mountains 3,00Q to 4,000 
feet high and of the length of the valley. These were of nearly 
precipitous sides, but rounding as they lifted to the lofty crests, 
seemed smooth, bald, solid, and of unfissured rocks ; across the 
lower end of the valley was another of like form and character. 
The plain below us seemed to have been scooped out of solid 



514 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

rock. There was a wonderful impressiveness in these huge 
masses of stone, each looking like a single rounded loaf-shaped 
bowlder, with a few little roughnesses in which stunted pines had 
taken root, making the sides look semi-green, but leaving the 
summits cold, naked, and gray. These masses of solid rock are 
more awe-inspiring than far loftier summits, where they are split 
and sundered into needles, horns, and pinnacles. The latter 
show at once that they have yielded to the elements. The solid 
mass seems to have defied time and nature, and to rest in eternal 
fixedness. A road bending and winding like a serpent upon itself 
brought us soon down into the valley. High upon the mountain 
side hung a little foamy stream bending over its very crest, and 
looking at top like' a silver thread tight twisted and compact, but 
as it came lower down, seeming to be frayed, until within 500 to 
800 feet of the bottom it was unravelled and spread into silvery 
mists. It looked but a tiny thing, yet we could hear it roar, 
though it was more than a half mile away. This beautiful valley 
is Flatdal in Thelemarken. 

Our road carried us nearly 4,000 feet up, over wild and dreary 
downs, far above the tree line and among bands of snow running 
in the deep furrows down to our feet. Few alpine passes are 
grander than this, and none more wildly dreary. On the little 
upland valleys was fair grass on which " saeters " were located, 
and cows and sheep were feeding, but within range of vision were 
loftier slopes gray with reindeer moss. Three of our meals were 
on fresh reindeer meat ; as roast and steak it was sweet and juicy. 
The owner of Haukeli-saeter owns a herd of 400. We were 
sorry to find they were all some miles off on a higher mountain, 
to which there was no road. He raises about 100 a year. They 
are milked twice a week. Their food is a peculiar moss which 
grows on the bleakest heights. The herd moves along as its 
food gives out. It is on this account that the Laplander has no 
fixed abode. He moves with his friend and support. It looked 
odd to see huge antlers lying around loose like cattle-horns in a 
butcher's yard. The flesh brings only a trifle more than beef. 
There are several large herds in Norway, the largest having 2,500 
head. The lofty mountain heights belong to government. Rein- 
deer owners pay for each a little over a kronor a year for pastur- 
age. The milk and cheese made from it has a sweetish taste, not 
unlike that of the sheep. 

The most striking piece of road I saw, and there are many fine 
ones, is that which drops one down from 1,000 or more feet into 
the valley of Roeldal. It bends about in loops not 100 feet 
across, winding round and about like a corkscrew. Some foot 
travellers at slow walk down the direct footpath beat us, though 
we went at a rapid trot, so rapid that I half held my breath sev- 
eral times when we seemed to be hanging on almost perpendicu- 
lar precipices. The outer sides of mountain roads have protec- 



SAETERS AND GAARDS. 515 

tions a few feet apart of blocks of stone three or so feet high, set 
firmly on the outer edge of the slope. At a little distance these 
blocks resemble crenulations on embattled walls. Looking from 
the lower valley of Roeldal to the road far above, the bendings 
are so short that they might be taken for embattled rounded 
towers. Tumbling over the crest of the mountain near this is a 
water-fall not far from 1,500 feet high, which, viewed from a point 
opposite seems a single cascade. The stream far above is proba- 
bly not over 20 feet wide, but it spreads over the steep sides of 
the rocks until in fan shape it becomes a mass of foam a hundred 
feet wide. So little has this splendid valley been visited that the 
guide books do not even mention this beautiful fall. Nestling- 
down in this valley is a deep, dark lake, from which lift mountains 
sheer up 2,000 to 3,000 feet. 

I spoke of " saeters." They are mountain establishments where 
cattle and sheep are grazed and the cows milked during the sum- 
mer. The milk is brought to the farms below each day when 
near, and twice a week when far off. We met twice, early in the 
morning, dozens of rosy-cheeked, tow-headed beauties, each with 
a couple of tin cans holding several gallons of milk. They go up 
at night, milk the cows, and bring in the produce early to their 
farm homes, perhaps several miles off. The cans swing from a 
sort of harness over the shoulders, and are kept apart by a flat 
stick scooped out so as to fit over the stomach. Ever valley 
farmer has his saeter-land in the mountains. Often the sky 
which overhangs his mountain land is of equal value per acre. 
A man has perhaps a farm of 25 to 50 acres in the valley ; 
off in the mountains he has hundreds or thousands of acres. 
On these are the saeters. The saeter buildings, cow- and hay- 
houses of several farmers are close together, and their cattle 
graze in common. The cattle are all housed each night and 
come in of their own accord. Some of these saeters are of 
themselves now comfortable farms, and have considerable culti- 
vatable lands ; this since good roads have been built to reach 
them. That is, some farms are still called saeters, though 
in strictness they are "gaards" (farms). They are, too, the sta- 
tions on the post-roads, in high altitudes, and have their fixed 
names, and on maps are marked as if they were villages. There 
are along the Thelemarken road many splendid water-falls, some 
of them tumbling from great heights and in large streams. Falls 
are frequent of several hundred feet high, and with much more 
water than is in the Bridal Veil at Niagara. At one point three 
falls are close together, two of them falling 200 or 300 feet from 
one mountain, the other from the opposite side of the gorge from 
another mountain. The three are not a hundred yards apart. This 
is a charming spot, one of the finest in the world. The falls of 
Switzerland are tame things compared to them. We did not visit 
the two great water-falls. What we saw was enough. I could 



5i6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

write of each wonderful place we visited, but it would take too 
much space ; I simply give some as specimens of all others ; these, 
however, being those which most pleased us, and being, too, more 
or less characteristic of all others. 

The Naeraedal is a gorge of terrific grandeur, barely broad 
enough to permit the passage of a rushing torrent and the narrow 
road. It is flanked by rocky mountains, lifted so precipitously as 
to seem almost perpendicular, of 3,600 and 4,300 feet respectively 
in height. At the outlet of this gloomy canyon lies Gudvangen, 
a pretty little hamlet on the head of the deep southern arm 
of the Sogner Fiord, itself but a continuation of the Naeraedal, 
only the water-way is of breadths varying from half a mile 
to one or more miles, and widening to several miles as it nears 
the sea. At the head of the Naeraedal gorge, over a steep slope 
of 1,000 or more feet, climbs, in a succession of short zigzags, the 
smooth and even road, having, now to the right and then to the 
left, one or two beautiful cascades, tumbling now in leaps and 
then in broken foam over jutting rocks, the streams forming 
each being considerable rivers. The view from the summit of 
this slope resembles the Yosemite. The mountains are al- 
most baldly naked gray felspath rock, two of them lifted in 
huge domes and presenting so rounded fronts that one can 
scarcely realize that they are the projecting ends of a long range 
and are not single well-defined domes. Behind these are two 
others, presenting their flanks to the narrow valley and blending 
into the vast rocks near the fiord. Into the depths of the gorge 
the winter's sun reaches only for a short time each day, and in 
some parts is not seen at all for two months. On the top of the 
steep slope named is a fine sanitarium hotel (Stalheim) looking 
down into this gloomy gorge, and looking up to the pinnacles 
3,000 feet above in whitened mass of rock and whiter snow. 

That one may understand the beauty and grandeur of the 
water-falls of Norway it is necessary to realize that though narrow 
cataracts when they rush through the rocky crevices, the streams 
are yet so large that when spread into widths from an eighth to a 
quarter of a mile, and several feet deep, they flow with the cur- 
rents of strong rivers. There are dozens of these large falls along 
the route we traversed, tumbling from elevations of 2,000 or 3,000 
feet, not all visible as falls in a single view, but in fearful rapids, 
and often in a succession of leaps, or dashing over steeply slop- 
ing precipices in snowy foam, and parts of each, if looked at from 
directly in front, having all the appearance of single leaping 
cascades. But besides these larger water-falls there are hun- 
dreds upon hundreds of smaller ones, which lie over and upon the 
sides of mountains 2,000 to 3,000 feet in height in bands of silver. 
One rides through valleys and along fiords for miles and miles, 
and is never out of sight of these long streams and is never out 
of hearing of their roar. Many of them which seem but threads 



MILD CLIMATE IN HIGH LATITUDES. 517 

are yet of such volume that they can be heard a mile or more 
away. In the wild gorge I have just named, though it is but 
eight miles long, and is the arm of the fiord of the same name 
and about as long, there are several dozen falls fed by the great 
snow-fields which cover the mountain plateau above. 

I should here state that Norway might be said to be a great 
mountain plateau varying from 3,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea, 
through which in every direction and in every form run innumera- 
ble bent and distorted valleys, some of which seem to have been 
formed by splitting the mountains asunder, and others as if the 
jets of molten matter had suddenly cooled before filling the space 
intended to hold them. These upper plateaus represented on a 
chart are gnarled and irregular in shape as are the valleys below. 
On them, each fall and winter, is heaped a vast mass of snow, 
caused by the meeting of winds moisture-laden from the gulf- 
stream, which washes the coast and the colder winds from the 
land. The sun is not hot enough to melt the snows in early 
summer, but gradually sends them down in innumerable streams 
till winter again locks them up with icy bolts. 

Although this country is in a higher latitude than northern Lab- 
rador and southern Greenland, yet its climate is so tempered by 
the gulf stream that on the coast there is rarely as cold weather in 
winter at Molde on the 63d degree and opposite the northern end 
of Hudson Bay, as at St. Louis. The winters are very long and in 
the interior are nearly as severe as at Chicago, but about the fiords 
and the lakes, which are extensions of them, vegetation is very 
rich and the foliage of the trees is of much luxuriance and of great 
size. I measured a lilac leaf five inches in diameter and elm leaves 
are twice as large as with us. This is the true home of the cur- 
rant. The bushes are as large as our snowballs and the fruit 
nearly as big as small cherries, and gooseberries are seen as large 
as damsons. One rarely sees anywhere so thrifty maples and 
lindens as about Molde Fiord. 

The whole of the Sogner Fiord presents magnificently grand 
scenery, but the sublimest in Norway is that of the Geiranger, 
one of the arms of the Stor. The water on this and other branches 
near is a mile and a half wide, but does not appear half so much, 
because of the towering precipices which rise out of the creek and 
almost perpendicularly climb to a height of four or more thou- 
sand feet. I have seen elsewhere only one sheet of water and 
mountain scene equal to this — the Koenig see in the Tyrol. It is 
apparently a lake, for no outlet is seen when once upon it. The 
rocks so blend together in their dark gray massiveness that they 
seem solid buttresses in every direction. The sharp, jutting edge 
of one of the lofty cliffs, 2,500 feet above, seems so to overhang 
that passengers on our little barge speculated upon the possibility 
of leaping from it to the water below. Here close by, like a 
mighty pulpit, is a canopied stone named after St. Olaf, who was 



5i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

hidden near by, and being slain became the patron saint of 
Norge. Little water-falls tumble over the great heights, some 
of them lost in mists far above, and until they are again caught 
by black projections, on which they are gathered and spread as 
veils of lace. 

Perched in several spots on terraces i,ooo and 2,000 feet up on 
the steep mountains, are tiny farms reached by zigzag paths along 
the cliffs, so steep that wooden poles are fastened along them to 
enable the climber to m.ount with his burden of hay. Grass is cut 
on every nook where a basketful can be saved and is then carried 
in boats to the foot of these paths, there dried, and afterward 
carried on the head above. We saw haymakers on spots so steep 
that they rested on a knee while the other leg would be stretched 
to reach a lower footing. They looked more like climbing hunters 
than every-day plodding toilers. How men and cattle can move 
about on the dizzy heights during snowy winters is a marvel, and 
now and then it is said one does lose foothold and goes tum- 
bling below. One of the pleasing peculiarities of Norwegian 
scenery is that in the most frightful gorges and on the steepest 
slopes, every spot whereon soil has collected and on which a man 
can stand becomes the mown meadow or field of a hardy moun- 
taineer. Houses seem to be hanging on the very brink of dizzy 
precipices, and on inclines so steep that one would suppose them 
anchored to keep them from sliding down ; and little fields are 
green in barley where one would think goats must be employed 
to harvest them, fields so small that a good-sized umbrella would 
almost shade them. When the slopes are free from rocks for 
eight or ten acres then they become sunny, smiling homesteads. 
These soften many rugged passes and give the roughest spots 
oftentimes a charming pastoral appearance. Then, again, wher- 
ever grass grows it becomes a meadow. Men and women climb 
-the steep mountain side to cut close every spot which can fur- 
nish a hamper full of short hay. Every spot as large as a good- 
sized bedspread, in wood or among rocks, is closely shaved and 
the crop taken off. Hay cut from these spots is carried off green 
to be dried elsewhere and housed. 

The air is so humid that the shaven sward at once takes an 
emerald hue. Little land is cultivatable, but a great deal grows 
short thin grass, all of which is mown, for the bulk of the cattle 
do not graze near the houses, but are kept during the summer 
high up on the mountain side. This grass-land is cut so evenly 
and the crop is so quickly removed that the mowing appears 
to have been done for beauty and not for use. Scattered over 
land about houses and hamlets are low birch and elm trees or 
bushes. These give to the valleys and lower mountain slopes a 
beautiful park-like appearance. The trees mentioned all have 
their regular uses. They are cut-in each year, and their young 
twigs and leaves are dried and stacked up about the barns, the 



THE ROMSDAL. 519 

twigs for fuel, the leaves for food for sheep and goats and to help 
out the cow should the regular provender prove short. Indeed, 
many of the poor people depend to a great extent upon leaves to 
support their two or three cows a good part of the long winter 
months. Little boys and girls and old people are seen constantly 
picking elm, birch, and mountain-ash leaves in great hamper 
baskets, to be dried and stored away. By the way, we have 
in America no conception of the beauty the mountain-ash is pos- 
sessed of. They greatly enliven the appearance at this season of 
many Norwegian landscapes, and are so red with berries that they 
look as if they had been sprinkled with blood for a passover in a 
more than Egyptian night. 

By many the Romsdal is considered the grandest of all Norwe- 
gian valleys. It is certainly magnificent. It is a strange mixture 
of beautifully home-like and terrific gorge scenery. Lofty moun- 
tains tower upwards of 5,000 feet high of almost solid, naked 
gneiss rock, so precipitous as to seem nearly vertical, some of 
them terminating in small rounded pinnacles, others cutting the 
sky with sharp-edged cliffs ; some are so smooth on their faces that 
they shine in a light, misty rain, and others rough as if just riven 
by fearful convulsions. These monster rocks tower on either side 
of and confine a valley nowhere half a mile wide, and in many 
parts only a few hundred yards across. The valley is beautifully 
cultivated, having pretty farm-houses, waving little fields, and 
clean-shorn and park-like meadows, and through it runs a river of 
much volume and of crystal clearness, always in swift flow, gen- 
erally in tumbling, turbulent, rapid, and in two or three places in 
beautiful cascades, twisting and leaping down dark canyons or 
clefts in the rocks. Up this majestic valley for several hours we 
were accompanied by dark clouds hanging below the crests of the 
mountain, now roofing the gorge over our heads, and then break- 
ing away and giving us glimpses of the sky lines far above. At 
one point a splendid cataract of large size tumbled close by us, 
1,000 feet in height, and with all the effect of a single leap ; 
a dark cloud screened its loftiest spring, so that it seemed to 
be pouring in foaming mass out of the very heavens. The Roms- 
dal debouches into the fiord near Molde, a very pretty town of 
nearly 2,000 people, and only a few miles from the Atlantic, 
which can be seen from an eminence behind the town. Here 
we were on the 63d parallel, and yet so soothing is the gulf 
stream that vegetation is of much luxuriance. Maples, lindens, 
elms, and cherry trees wore leaves of great size, and the currant 
and gooseberry bushes are twice as tall as I have seen them 
in America, and the honeysuckle embowered the houses. To the 
east of the town, across the fiord, which spreads into a land-locked 
bay, stretches a long line of peaked mountains, broken into an 
exquisite sky line with patches, collars, and bands of snow, giving 
it a wildly alpine appearance. Here we were nearer the sea than 



520 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

anywhere else before. Our journey from Odde had been over the 
north and south arms of fiords and through the high passes divid- 
ing them, and from 30 to 80 miles from the true coast line. 

Before quitting the fiords I must not omit to mention Sjoe- 
holt, on the Slyngs Fiords, which affords one of the most charm- 
ing water and mountain views to be found in any land. The 
fiord, four or five miles wide, lies between lofty mountains more 
or less covered with verdure and reaching toward the ocean for 
15 or 20 miles, with a background of prettily outlined hills. The 
mountains fall in height from those nearest to those farthest ofT, 
in such manner that the loss of elevation in the more distant ones 
seems so be caused by perspective, rather than in reality. 

The Romsdal pass ends in a high mountain plateau of wild and 
desolate character, and then commences the valley of Gudbrand 
or Guldbrandsdal, which cuts Norway from the northwest to the 
southeast. In this was the seat of the last of the pagan chiefs of 
the land. The mountains in this charming valley are quite high, 
but have long slopes on which are beautiful farms and thrifty 
farmers, living in good old-fashioned style. When I say beauti- 
ful farms, I mean for this land. Now and then is a field of 20 
acres in size, generally smaller, but running one into another so 
closely as to give a single-field appearance to the whole. In many 
respects the characteristics of the valley are not unlike some of 
the finest Swiss valleys, only this continues at greater length, 
being considerably over 100 miles in extent. The farm-lands 
climb 1,000 or more feet up the mountain side and then meet 
upper wooded heights, only a few of the loftier ones being devoid 
of trees. 

Our little reached horses carried us in good trot, down this 
valley to Lillehammer, where we took steamer on the long 
lake dignified here as an inland sea, the Mioesen, a beauti- 
ful, narrow sheet of water, bordered by fine mountains, with 
every slope a picture of pastoral beauty. But we have Copen- 
hagen now not far off to see, and I close, after having done but 
half justice to the land of Norge. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

COPENHAGEN— THORWALDSEN—FREDERICKSBORG— THRIFTY 

DANES— RUN TO BERLIN— BERLIN IN 1852 AND NOW— 

REFLECTIONS. 

Berlin, Septembtr 21, 1888. 

The approach to Copenhagen by sea from the north is quite 
imposing. On the left lies Sweden, with its high, sloping ground, 
pleasantly wooded, and dotted by villages of some size. On the 
right lie the low-lifting lands of Denmark, or Zealand, with 
picturesque Helsingoer, the old gateway to the Baltic for the sea- 
dogs of the British Isles and for the Vikings of the northern fiords. 
The hardy Danes held the key to unlock the gates and demanded 
and obtained no light toll from trading craft which wished to sell 
or to barter with the people of the northern inland sea. With a 
deeply uttered " Vaer saa god " (be so good), the toll-taker 
boarded every ship going or coming. If the skipper was slow to 
pay, the leather-jerkined Dane laid his heavy hand upon a huge 
blade hanging over his hip, and pointing to the big pop-guns 
ranged like unheaded beer kegs about frowning Kronborg, got 
his gold without much ado. Elsinore was a big thing in olden 
days, and sagely crazed Hamlet uttered its name sonorously. I 
know not if the prototype of the ghost exacted fixed fees. He 
and those of his ilk perhaps took as occasion demanded or ability 
to pay permitted, but when the Hanseatic League, those free cru- 
saders whose God was trade, and whose coursers trod the path- 
less sea in quest of gain, toppled over, the Dane had his regular 
toll-fees, and charged somewhat as per tonnage. This, however, 
became a bitter pill to swallow for the great nations which could 
take all Denmark down at a gulp without making a wry face. So 
not long ago, I forget when exactly, but since the Yankee carved 
out the golden heart of Mexico, they paid to Denmark some- 
where in the neighborhood of $80,000,000 for the relinquishment 
of the right to close the free use of this artery of old ocean, and 
since then the once grand and powerful Elsinore has dropped 
down to a town of a few thousand population, whither people go 
on excursions to revive old memories ; and the amiable Christian, 
ninth of the name, carries the fame of his land all over Europe 
by furnishing unkinged countries with rulers, and reigning rulers 
with queens, and is, I hope, furnishing the veins of royal lines 
with a vigorous and yet kindly blood. 

521 



522 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

I believe in Danish blood, for I go even further back than our 
Republican candidate, Ben, does for the origin of our line. It was 
Airesen, the Yorkshire Dane, who helped to flog the Saxon and 
stole some one's north English home, and set us afloat upon the 
troublous waters of this world. Out of revenge, John Bull, unable 
to slash the man, put a rough aspirate to his name, and he became 
" Harrison." I do not know that I can say to the ghost of this 
old fellow, " I will call thee royal Dane." I am not by any means 
certain his was blue blood at all, unless of the color of blue flame. 
For his descendants were " butchers and bakers and candle-stick 
makers," and especially ran to the trade of blacksmithing, and the 
bluest of blazes arose from their furnaces, if not running in their 
veins, and Cromwell's friend could have made the axe which clev- 
erly taught kings that they were quite human. I like the Danes, 
too after visiting them. They are a nice sort of people, good-look- 
ing, active, and appear brimful of intelligence. The men are strong 
and hardy, and Willie says the girls are very good-looking. I had 
to tear him away from the Tivoli when the clock struck low 12, 
and had I not exercised prudent parental restraints, he would 
have gone to that fairy garden every night. He has more admira- 
tion for European female costume than I, and the nearer he 
approaches to Paris the greater grows his zeal in that direction. 
Perhaps it is the difference between 19 years of age and 63. He 
dotes on rosy cheeks. I pity the poor things who are caged up 
in corsets and weighted down with skirts. 

But I was approaching Copenhagen. The two shores of the 
Sound are pleasing, but that of Denmark the more so. There are 
a succession of villages, one almost running into the other. The 
spires and towers of the capital beyond loomed high above the 
city, over which rested a heavy veil of smoke, telling plainly of 
English soft coal ; not a pall such as hangs over Chicago, but too 
much so for the beauty of the city or for the whiteness of shirt 
fronts. Passing the picturesque fort, all green with high sward- 
covered earthworks, and, through two lines of war steamers 
showing iron teeth, and old ships of the line (the royal navy), we 
landed at a pretty pier, about which gayly dressed people were 
enjoying an evening promenade. 

We soon found ourselves in a fine city of 300,000 people, well- 
built, well paved, and in every way worthy to be the capital of a 
thriving though not large kingdom. The people have quite a 
cosmopolitan style about them, and move about with a brisk, busi- 
ness air. Shop windows make pretty displays and signs are 
gaudy. It is astonishing how four or five names predominate all 
over the town. In Norway you call a boy " Olaf " and the 
chances are he will answer you. Here you may take off your hat 
to " Mr. Nielsen." He will either return your salute, or he will 
say you are mistaken, his name is " Jansen." Nielsens, Olsens, 
Petersens, and Jansens are everywhere. It seemed to me that 



THORU'ALDSEN, BRAHE, AND ANDERSEN. 523 

■out of every 100 signs, more than half of them were of these. 
Sometimes " Jansen " took a variation and called himself " Johan- 
sen," and " Petersen " became " Pedersen." But the dodge could 
not fool a knowing one — they were " Jansen " and " Petersen " still, 
just as " Smythe " is surely " Smith." Stores are crowded closely 
together, and basements are evidently as popular as first-floors. 
All that is required is enough of the basement window above the 
sidewalk to make a pretty display, and the below ground is a 
good locality for a money changer, a meerschaum dealer, or a 
statuette vendor. The streets in the old town are narrow and the 
sidewalks very contracted, but they are all kept clean, and as 
many people walk in the roadway as on the foot-path ; this es- 
pecially in the evening when wagon traffic is mostly over. The 
streets were generally well peopled, probably more so while we 
were there than usual, owing to the exhibition then coming to a 
close. In the new quarters the streets are tolerably broad and 
the houses rarely under four stories in height, five being the 
usual number. These newer buildings are of pretty modern archi- 
tecture, but built in solid blocks, there being very few separate 
houses with yards or grass plats. Looked down upon, from one 
of several church towers, the city is picturesque. I chose the one 
known as the " Round Tower," for my observation, because of 
its easy ascent over a broad winding walk upon brick arches, up 
which Peter the Great rode on horseback, and his queen, Cath- 
erine, in a carriage. This tower is 1 10 feet high. By stepping the 
outer edge of the walk I found it 330 yards. The old town from 
it looks very quaint, with its tall houses built on narrow, irregular 
streets, of lofty, steeply pitched roofs, with two, three, and some- 
times four stories of trap windows cut through the red bent tiles. 
Circling about the old city is the finely built newer town, with 
massive blocks of buildings all in black-slate roofing. There are 
some fine public buildings in the city, and the old Rosenburg 
palace is filled with mementoes of the kings and queens of the 
land, many of them rich and interesting. 

But it i^ not the kings and queens or their works which make 
Copenhagen interesting to the traveller. It is the memory of three 
men — Tycho Brahe, who played with the stars and made them 
the companions of man ; Hans Christian Andersen, who touches 
the human heart and makes the prattle of children sweet songs 
for old age; and Bertel Thorwaldsen, whose chisel gave to marble 
a breathing soul. These three have monuments here, but the 
real monuments of one are in the scientific libraries of the world, 
and of another on the book-shelves of the reading mothers in 
many lands. They can be known everywhere, but it is only in 
Denmark's capital that one can fully know the grandeur of Thor- 
"waldsen or enjoy his works. There one breathes a Thorwaldsen 
atmosphere. If not near one of his great pieces in marble or 
plaster, he sees about him in shop windows or in hotels and stores 



524 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

little statuettes and placques, fine reduced copies of his master- 
pieces. Close by the great palace, now but a shell, for only its 
solid walls were left unconsumed by fire, stands the Thorwaldsen 
museum, solid, massive, and gloomy, and not unfittingly so, too, 
for it contains his tomb, as well as the bulk of his works and of 
his art and household treasures. The oblong building surrounds 
an open court, in the centre of which is his grave, green with 
growing vines, but plain and otherwise unadorned. His real 
monument are the creations of his brain and chisel, which fill the 
rooms and corridors three stories high of the building enclosing 
his ashes. There one can wander for hours, feeling that the very 
spirit of the man is hovering near him. And what a spirit is his ! It 
speaks in his every statue and rests before you in his every relievo. 
I am perhaps not connoisseur enough to feel thus and try to find 
a cause for the feeling. I reached the conclusion that it arose 
from the presence of his own statue by himself among his other 
works. This is so natural and life-like that it seems to live in and 
to pervade the entire building. His Christ and the Twelve in 
the Church of our Lady, are considered the grandest works of 
his hand, but they do not so strike me. The Redeemer is 
majestic, but to me, more from its great size and its simple pose 
than from any conception it embodies. Take away the sentiment 
which any fine representation of the Saviour necessarily arouses, 
and there is not much left — a pagan, a cold unbeliever, could 
look on it utterly unmoved. Different is the effect produced by 
the frieze which surrounds the base of the vaulted dome behind. 
This represents the procession to Calvary's hill. The horses seem 
actually moving, excited by the shouts of the multitude, and one 
can almost hear the cry of " Crucify him ! " by those who are 
hurrying toward the hill. So life-like is the form of Mary as she 
drops under weary agony, that one can see her as she is sinking. 
Christ, seeing her, seems to pause and loom up as he bears his 
heavy cross. The wood grows light, borne up by the mighty heart 
of the bearer, and the sad yet grand pity of the son, as he turns 
his face toward his sorrowing mother, is wonderfully touching. 
I have never heard this frieze spoken of, but to me it is the finest 
design of the mighty master. 

The opera-house is a building of decided artistic merit, and it 
is said the performances in it are of a high order. But it is to the 
Tivoli one goes to see the gayety and life of Copenhagen. Its 
grounds are of many acres and contain all sorts of amusement, 
from the Flying Dutchman to the orchestra dispensing classic 
music. One can spend a whole evening and not take in the 
shows. Caf^s abound to suit every purse and music for every 
taste. Here under a handsome half-dome is a great brass band 
with appropriate airs. Two hundred yards off is a huge glass 
pavilion, with light supporting pillars and arches decorated with 
trailing vines and masses of rare exotics ; crystal chandeliers, bright 



COPENHAGEN. THE TIVOLI. 525 

with a thousand gas jets, flashing through prismatic pendants, 
and an orchestra of 100 instruments discourses music of the high- 
est order. Close by the first is a cheaper restaurant and caf6, 
where a few aere will enable a moderate man to slake his 
thirst or satisfy his hunger, while hearing good band music. At 
the crystal pavilion the chocolate, coffee, and ices are as good as 
one gets at Paris, and the wines are costly, and thousands of the 
elite, in pretty costumes, eat, drink, promenade, and flirt. The 
entrance fee to the garden with all of its privileges is only 50 aere, 
about 14 cents. Thousands go every night and take their evening 
meal, and thereby make the stock of the company a good invest- 
ment. The garden is brilliantly lighted with electricity and gas, 
and when we attended the most perfect order and decorum 
reigned. Between the two principal music-houses is a variety 
theatre, Avhere rather rollicking pantomime is performed. These 
three sets of amusements alternate, so that a visitor can go from 
one to the other, a regular printed programme giving him the 
pieces to be played and the order, so that he can take his sausage 
to band music, his ices and chocolate to orchestral, laugh both 
down between times at the show, and promenade among acres of 
other amusements. 

Apparently the biggest man in Copenhagen, next to the king, 
is the owner of Karlberg brewery. Not only does he slake every 
person's thirst, but is a patron of arts. He has a fine gallery 
and adorns the exposition. It may be for advertisement. But 
would it not be a good thing for some of our millionaires to 
advertise in the same way. By the way, he has queer advertise- 
ment in the grounds. A huge bottle, 50 to 100 feet high, in the 
top of which people go in lines to see the stars. I have often heard 
of people seeing stars by getting a bottle into themselves, but here 
the thing is reversed. Near the grounds the brewer has an electri- 
cal lens, a sort of revolving light-house, which carries rays to a great 
distance, sending rainbow hues at night among the branches of the 
trees and over domes, and far off on lofty buildings. 

Adjoining and occupying the grounds during the day is the 
National Exposition. This is quite thorough, but not very large. 
The main building is of beautiful design, and great taste has 
been displayed in the arrangement of goods and wares. Next to 
Denmark, Sweden makes -the largest exhibition, and Russia the 
richest. This latter people are treading hard upon the more 
western ones in industrial arts, but run largely to rich and costly 
fabrics. Norway is prettily and characteristically represented 
with log mountain houses, reindeer and peasants in costume. 
The art gallery has many fine things, Denmark and Sweden 
taking the lead, Norway following. The Germans claim that 
their best things have gone to Munich. 

The city of Copenhagen has some parks quite in the town, 
which add greatly to its beauty. These occupy partly the place 



526 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

of the old fortifications. They are thoroughly kept up, and 
afford the people charming walks without the necessitj^ of patron- 
izing the street-cars to reach them. There are many monuments 
and statues adorning different squares and gardens, all of con- 
siderable merit, and a broad sheet of lake water through the new 
quarter of the city. An hour's run by rail brings the sight-seer 
to Fredericksborg, a very handsome palace rising out of a pretty 
lake. Unfortunately the water is very nasty, and makes one 
hold his breath when the wind is coming toward him ; but the 
grounds are beautiful, and the interior of the palace charming. 
It is arranged as a national museum, showing the progress of the 
kingdom's history, and possesses many charming pictures, the 
finest being by Block. His small pictures in the chapel repre- 
senting the history of Christ are marvels of beauty, but must be 
seen to be enjo3/ed, and cannot be described. An amusing inci- 
dent occurred to us in the palace. VVe entered a long, narrow 
gallery. At the farther end of it we saw what appeared to be 
life-sized figures. Involuntarily I exclaimed, " Ya Amerikanets," 
and marched on, as I recognized one as that of the czar of Russia. 
It was a huge picture, representing King Christian and his queen 
and their children, with their wives or husbands and their chil- 
dren, in all 32, and of life-size. So finely executed is the whole 
that when first seen in the distance they look the originals them- 
selves. The czar and czarina are in the foreground, and first 
seen when one approaches through the long gallery. What a 
progeny has this Danish king ! There stood the Autocrat of the 
Russias, the most powerful individual in the world ; the future 
king of England if the good old lady will ever let him mount the 
throne of the most powerful government the world ever knew ; 
the king of Greece, ruling the land red-flowered from its soil 
being rich with the blood of heroes ; the crown prince and little 
. girls and boys enough to furnish all future Christendom with 
royal eaters for the people to feed. 

The run from Copenhagen by rail through Zealand was very 
interesting. The farm-houses are low, all in squares, all thatched 
and quaint. The queer old church towers, square with high- 
pitched roof, as if the builders had quit before the towers were 
finished and thrown over them temporary tile coverings. The 
towers are about a third of the whole ground-plan of the church 
edifices. 

The country is all thoroughly cultivated, of good soil, and 
teeming with produce. Cattle, horses, and sheep were browsing 
down the clover or grass in regular lines, every one tethered, 
each with line enough to enable it to feed up to the next one's 
bound. Instead of driving the cows to the house to be milked, 
the maid visits them in order across the field. The milking 
seemed to go on up to ten o'clock or later. All animals are 
tethered by a head halter, but the muzzle bands are of wood 



COPENHAGEN TO BERLIN. 527 

instead of leather; two sticks across the lateral jaw fastened at 
top, but with holes under the jaw. Through these the line runs. 
If the animal pulls, the sticks act as a clamp and soon cure the 
wearer of any disposition to pull. I saw hundreds of animals 
out at pasture, but not a single one loose. This causes each 
animal to eat closely its own little pasturage and insures great 
economy of grass. Parts of the country look very woody, owing 
to the fact that lines of trees are planted along the edges of every 
field. These are all cut-in for twigs for fuel and to make fences of, 
the twigs woven into and through uprights. There were seen few 
fences in Zealand, but on the island south the land was fenced into 
very small fields, and yet in all of these the grazing stock were 
tethered. Apparently the Danes are good farmers. The ground 
being sown in rye or wheat was admirably prepared, and there 
was a general appearance of comfort about the farmsteads and an 
air of thrift everywhere. The people look as if they were gov- 
erned by fair laws. It has been the boast of their kings that 
their monuments were in the hearts of the people, and that they 
could at any time safely lie down upon the lap of a subject. 
Certainly a happy, as well as a proud boast. 

At Gjedserodde we took steamer for Warnemunde, at the 
mouth of the Warnow River in Mecklenburg, reaching it in two 
hours. This is a pretty sea-bathing place for the Prussians. 
Along the bank of the river for nearly a mile, over a well-built 
quay, is a narrow esplanade, planted with nice young trees, and 
lined on the inner side with little cottages, each with a veranda 
or a porch enclosed with glass, in which we could see from the 
steamer, as we sailed by close to the shore, the fashionable people 
sitting at tables as if in glazed conservatories. Many were prom- 
enading under the trees. The ladies must have been pretty, for 
Willie insisted that we stop over a day, and sighed when I refused. 
We landed and took rail for Berlin. We passed by quaint old 
Rostock, with its lofty church towers and its memories of past 
glory when it was an influential member of the Hanseatic 
League. Then through the Mecklenburg Switzerland. I was 
quite surprised to find Prussia possessed any country with such 
fine scenery. For many miles we ran through low mountains, 
or rather high hills, clothed in fine forest, with now and then a 
pretty lake and several quaint old towns. We saw quite a num- 
ber of handsome chateaux, and still more large manorial estab- 
lishments or Ritter houses, with huge squares of barns ; with 
great fields, where steam machinery seemed to be used in har- 
vesting and scores of laborers were at work. There were meadows 
large enough to make a dozen ordinary German farms, and dozens 
of tidy-looking peasant women were raking hay, and scores of 
men were mowing in long lines. In three instances I saw propri- 
etors on horseback overlooking many field laborers, this being 
the first time I had ever seen farming on this scale in Germany. 
The whole ride was pretty till night fell. 



528 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

Reaching Berlin, we drove to the Central Hotel. The porter 
told us he had but two rooms vacant, and yet the house accom- 
modates 700 guests. When he informed me of the price of the 
vacant rooms I told him the revenues had not come for this year 
from my island in the Indian Ocean, and that I only wanted to 
stop a few days, and did not wish to purchase the hotel. A Ger- 
man hotel porter is probably the most dignified of human beings. 
One who has never seen one can form no idea of the dignity of 
which the human form is capable. They never laugh, very rarely 
smile. Their caps go off with exquisite grace to a man who 
drives up with a footman. Their hats are an immovable fixture 
to a traveller who approaches in a second-class carriage. Willie 
asked me one day if there were not training-schools for porters, 
they were so fearfully dignified. I told him they were born so. 
For did not the Roman say : " Portier nascitur, non fit." We 
then went to the Windsor, an old house, where we pay our money 
and get its worth. And then at last we were fixed in the capital 
of the German Empire, the land of Rudesheimer and Hochheimer, 
and of the real lager that cheers but does not inebriate, the land 
of personal liberty, — I do not know so well as to the other kind, 
— the land which in a few short months this year had three em- 
perors without a tragedy, and now has three empresses and one 
Bismarck. 

Berlin, with 1,300,000 people, is a grand city, fit capital for 
a powerful empire. I spent in it the last month of 1852 ; it 
was then a rather dull and heavy city of 400,000 people. It 
was not a fascinating town, and one lived in it with regretful 
memories of Paris and Vienna. I had a pleasant sojourn in it, 
however, and made my first real acquaintance with that, to me, 
most attractive characteristic of the father-land, the simple, un- 
pretending home, with its unobtrusive hospitality and genuine 
warm-hearted kindliness. Under one roof-tree were the father and 
mother, the son and daughter, and perhaps the son-in-law and 
daughter-in-law, all friends and equals. There was the great 
linen-room, with sheets and pillow-cases, towels and shirts, and 
female underwear enough to set up a moderate furnishing shop, 
all sweet, and smelling of fragrant cleanliness ; there in another 
room were great baskets filled with soiled linen. I don't think 
washing-day came oftener than once or twice a year, when it was 
done in the country by wholesale, and what a splashing and 
beating there was out by the river-side when the first dirt was 
thumped out with paddles. I had seen it during the summer in 
the country. I went with paterfamilias and his flock to winter- 
gardens, where we listened to music and ate our evening meal. 
Die gute mutter knit socks for the little grandchild, and the 
young daughter-in-law worked names upon her own garments or 
on little odd fabrics for some one not yet ushered into this 
breathing world. Fraulein Hedwig talked in low tones with 



BERLIN A GRAND CITY. 529 

Rudolph, to whom she was betrothed, and sometimes their 
hands, which had become somehow fastened together under the 
table, forgot to release the grasp when they came above the 
cloth ; and the young American talked glibly in bad Deutsch, and 
made many odd and sometimes ofifish mistakes ; but he would be 
reassured when the family would tip beer glasses, and the brother 
would call him " alter Schwede." He was trying to learn German 
in those days, and mingled whenever he could with the good, 
simple-hearted folks. I am afraid much of this old-fashioned 
warmth has departed since Berlin has become so grand, and mill- 
ions of French gold have got into the land. For the capital is 
now a grand city; old houses have been torn down ; new streets 
have been made ; and private residences are almost palatial. 
Now and then in my walks I stumble upon quarters where old 
buildings are looking familiarly upon me and are talking of long 
ago ; but everywhere new ones are being wedged in among the 
old, and in a few years there will be but little left to remind one 
of the past, except about the public edifices, which have changed 
but Httle. 

Government seems to have had sterner duties than erecting 
palaces and museums. It has been building an empire. Private 
wealth, however, has not been idle, and Berlin shows more indi- 
viduality of taste among its private residences than any other city 
we have visited. St. Petersburg is grand, but the monogram of 
an autocracy seems to meet one's eye in every fa9ade and on 
every column. The love of personal liberty pervades Berlin and 
shows itself in the varied styles of its residences and the exhibi- 
tion of the owner's notions in architecture. In the new quarter 
of the town, south of Thiergarten, are miles of streets, some of 
them not much broader than our wide alleys, lined with elegant 
houses, as varied in appearance as are the characters of the owners. 
One common feature, however, pervades the whole : all have 
small gardens or door-yards in front, filled with pretty shrubbery 
and handsome trees, with trailing vines climbing high over the 
walls, and with porches often two stories high, and balconies 
loaded with exquisite flowers and rare exotics. These little front 
yards give a sui^cient width between house lines and prevent the 
narrow streets seeming too narrow. All yards are fenced off from 
the streets with light iron railings. The fashion which'has sprung 
up in America of leaving door-yards open is a bad one. It takes 
away that air of privacy which is absolutely necessary to a home. 
I believe in democracy, but I want my house to be mine own, 
into which no one can enter except by lifting the latch-string ; 
and my yard and grounds are as much a part of my home as is 
my sitting-room. When I sit in my yard in my hammock-chair 
I am willing all should see me enjoying my dolce far niente, but 
if any one wishes to enter, let him come in by the gate. It is a 
sort of snobbery to throw into the street the house-yard, and to 



530 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

expect that the owner's name will throw about it a Jioli me tan- 
gcre sanctity. A light railing permits a full view of the hand- 
somest grounds, but at the same time gives an air of home-like 
privacy. Perhaps one of the most peculiar features among first- 
class residences here are the little shops, creameries, green grocer- 
ies, and the like in basements of the finest houses. They are 
certainly a great convenience to the residents. 

The first thing we did the morning after our arrival in Berlin 
was to walk through the great street, Unter den Linden. It was 
not much changed since 1874, nor indeed since 1852. The same 
street, 190 feet broad, with its trafific-ways on either side, its 
bridle-path, and its broad foot-ways under quadruple lines of 
trees ; but the lindens looked stunted and sickly. They alone of 
all things have not thriven under the empire. How poor are 
they compared with the fresh and vigorous trees on Herren- 
hauser Allee at Hanover. We walked down to Frederick the 
Great's statue. I never could pass it without pausing for some 
time. It had been but lately erected when I was first here in 
1852. Never lifted in metal or marble a more living, moving 
horse, and Fritz sits him as a part of him. I took my first lesson 
in properly sitting a saddle from it, and have often had a quiet 
fancy that the grim old king sits thus through eternity. Not a 
bad heaven to sit on such a horse throughout eternal eons. I 
hail thee, " Ranch ! " Thou understoodest the difference between 
a thorough-bred and a plug, and well didst thou know how to 
mount thy royal rider, so that he and his charger would never 
tire. If the government has not cared to expend much upon 
building museums and palaces, it has not been idle in filling those 
it had with noble works of art ; and now the student and the con- 
noisseur can spend weeks with pleasure and profit in the galleries 
of Berlin. Some of the newer public buildings are fine. The 
good oberburgomeister (first mayor) showed me through the noble 
civic palace, the rathhaus, and tendered me an intelligent gentle- 
man to carry me to and through all of the city departments. 

It is the boast of the Berliner that his city is now utterly 
impregnable, yet once every week the best part of it is absolutely 
taken possession of by a peculiar people. The name " Unter 
den Linden " should be taken down each Saturday morning and 
" Judenstrasse " should be put in its place, for the Jews take 
possession of it. Not Jews silent and melancholy, as in Poland ; 
not Jews squalid, keen, and crafty, as in Amsterdam ; but well- 
dressed Jews, intelligent Jews, with heads erect, looking as if 
they knew and felt their power and influence ; Jews out in their 
finery, on foot and in equipages, enjoying the day on which they 
were commanded to do no manner of work, for on that day the 
Lord their God did cease from his labors. They own many of 
the largest manufactories and works about Berlin, and live in 
magnificent houses. I accidentally visited their elegant syna- 



THE JEWS OF BERLIN. .531 

gogue when a wedding ceremony was being performed ; after 
the couple arrived, the doors were closed and nobody could enter. 
About the altar were hot-house plants, mostly green. Preceded 
by rabbies bearing candles the bride and groom mounted the steps 
leading to the narrow altar, followed by eight or ten young ladies, 
all exquisitely dressed. The bride was robed in fleecy white and 
wore a veil concealing her face. The groom wore his sleek hat, 
and all males throughout the building kept on their own, for it 
was commanded that covered they should enter the temple of 
the Lord. The ceremony was long — a half hour. At the end 
the officiating rabbi removed the veil, the groom kissed the bride, 
and the knot was indissolubly tied. I do not think a Chicago 
divorce court could undo the bond made by that long ceremony. 
I saw the bride well when she descended from the altar, and so 
very pretty was she that I felt sure her husband would never wish 
again to be free. It was the God of the Israelites alone who de- 
creed that the woman should be a helpmeet to her husband. 
Such order exists in no other theocracy, and well has the Jewish 
woman obeyed the mandate. Among no other religionists does 
the wife so earnestly fulfil her duties. She assists the man with 
womanly devotion ; she instils into her children obedience to the 
mandate " Honor thy father and thy mother," and under that 
code the child grows up learning to obey before he learns to or- 
der, and to acquire the knowledge purchased by the long experi- 
ence of the parent. He thus enters manhood prepared to battle 
through life with the wisdom of the father. In that lies the 
secret of the wonderful success of these people in every walk of 
life they attempt. The young among the Jews do not think 
their fathers old fossils, but tread in the safe track laid out by 
experience, and improve upon it as they march and learn. Chris- 
tianity, springing out of Judaism, gave greater scope to freedom 
of thought and of action. But the youth of Christendom too 
often mistakes license for freedom, and imagines that it knows 
all when it has acquired the wisdom of books and of the colleges. 
It forgets there is a wisdom at home, unpretentious, and often 
uttered with unlettered tongue, which is not written in books or 
delivered in learned lectures ; a wisdom simple and practical, 
homely and rough, which is worth for the private walks of life far 
more than all the teachings of the schools. There are few men 
of 50 who cannot teach much to the brightest boy of 21. The 
Jewish mother teaches this to her boy, and without knowing it, 
plays the wise professor. 

Berlin is cut by several canals, which years ago performed a 
very stinking role. All of this has been changed. The canals 
are handsomely walled up with solid quays, carry produce cheaply 
through many parts of the city, and now instead of giving odors 
which I remember as being quite nasty, are entirely inoffensive. 
Trees and turfed walks border them, making pleasant prom- 



532 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

enades, and elegant residences loom up along their lines. The pri- 
vate residences of Berlin and the great beauty of their floral adorn- 
ments evince decided taste among the people ; but another thing 
which would not perhaps so strike most observers, also evinces this 
growth, — that is, the decorations about and manner of goods dis- 
played in shop windows. Many of them vie with those of Paris. 
There is not, as there, the lavish display of jewels and precious 
stones, although these are fine, but rather of articles de vertii and 
small works of art, many of then of considerable merit. Very many 
windows have busts, statuettes, and pictures, single and grouped, 
of the three emperors and their children. The rapidly succeed- 
ing demises of the two elder ones, coupled with their illnesses 
and the sad surroundings of Frederick's death have done much to 
endear the house of Hohenzollern to the people. This is touch- 
ingly shown by the thousands who stop before the imperial 
groups, and by the kindly words then uttered. The young em- 
peror appeals most to the people's hearts by the pictures showing 
him fondling with his little children, especially in one where he is 
kissing his little baby, or throwing it into the air. People delight 
to know their rulers are filled with home affections, and that 
monarch and subjects have this common bond between them. 
There can be no doubt that Wilhelm is now deeply nestled in the 
hearts of the Germans, and perhaps all the more so because when 
he was three degrees removed from the throne there was a strong 
prejudice againt him ; it was thought he was too much imbued 
with Anglican prejudices. 

There is one thing among the Germans over here that I do not 
admire, and that is a ridiculous adulation of rank and love of 
titles. The great military manoeuvres have been in progress, and 
every day imperial carriages are seen dashing along the Unter den 
Linden with visiting guests or their attending of^cers going to or 
-from the station or to some banquet. The thousands on the 
streets stop and look at them as they pass as if they were made 
of some new kind of stufT ; and it matters not if the occupants 
of the royal carriage be visitors or home ofificials, the hats around 
are rapidly doffed. Several times I have asked gentlemen who I 
saw were uncovering, who the occupants of the carriages were. 
Generally they did not know. It mattered not whether the 
officers had won their spurs, or were simply favored ones, off go 
hats. If an imperial carriage happens to stop before a house 
awaiting the egress of the one who is to ride, frequently a thousand 
people stop and wait the great one's coming out. It is pleasant 
to see the doer of great deeds or the thinker of great thoughts 
honored, but it grates upon the feelings to see one bowed to 
simply because he wears a title. And then the way a man's 
titles are piled on when addressed is very amusing, especially in 
provincial towns. I remember how this bothered me some years 
ago, when my family was here. At a semi-literary dinner was a 



GERMAN LOVE OF TITLES. .533 

doctor of laws, who was assistant professor of rhetoric. He was 
always addressed as Herr Dr. Assistant Professor of Rhetoric 

, all the titles being compounded into one word ; or Herr 

Colonel Master of the Duke's Stables . Woe to the guest 

who failed to compound into one word all of these positions when 

addressing Mr. , or who left out the word " von " ! I made 

many mistakes and finally settled the matter by telling them frankly 
that I was an unlettered Yankee. They let me get through with 
one title in addressing any one, but I think they very much pitied 
my lack of good form. I do not wonder that kings, princes, and 
nobles throughout the world think themselves made of finer ma- 
terial than that of common men. The people by their adulation 
teach them so to think. Socialists in Germany and France rail 
at the privileged classes ; Nihilists in Russia slay them ; but the 
great bulk of the people show that they worship them, and when 
one master is gotten rid of, they each pick up a lamp and grope 
about in the dark, Diogenes-like, trying to find, not an honest man, 
but another master, under whose feet they may lay their necks. 
In France there is a republic, at least in name, but true French 
republicans, deeply imbued with a genuine love of liberty, coupled 
at the same time with a love of order and good government, are 
hard to be found among the masses. They pick up a charlatan 
and are ready to do his bidding because he somehow reminds 
them of Napoleon ; and Bonapartists and royalists feed their 
folly, so that they may bring democracy into ill repute and there- 
by pave the way for monarchy ; and in America madmen are 
banding together ready to destroy the best form of government 
the world ever knew because it lacks something they have 
dreamed of in their wild Utopian philosophy. Will men — can 
men ever learn to be wise enough to enjoy the good that is 
possible and to bear the ills that are inevitable ? We have 
coursed with the sun around the world ; we have seen many 
lands and many peoples ; we have watched these latter and have 
seen the greed with which they hunger for masters, and I some- 
times ask myself, did God's fiat go forth, when he fashioned man 
from clay, that clay they were, clay they would be, and as clay 
should be trodden upon ? Ah ! what fools these mortals be ! 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

A LUNCH "EN FAMILLE" WITH BISMARCK— CHARMING HOSPITAL- 
ITY—KINDLINESS OF THE PRINCE— AUTOGRAPHS AND 
PHOTOGRAPHS. 

Hamburg, September 23, 1888. 

Being in Berlin, the focal centre whence moved the forces 
which unified a number of comparatively petty states always 
jealous of and often quarrelling with each other, into an empire 
so powerful that the courteous visit of its young emperor to a 
brother ruler quiets the political world and enhances the value of 
imperial coins, I was naturally desirous of seeing and, if possible, 
talking with the statesman whose genius and iron will wrought 
this wonderful transformation. We were told at our legation and 
by others that the thing was impossible ; that our minister had 
seen Bismarck but once, and then only in curt and most formal 
manner. I resolved to dispense with diplomatic assistance, and 
to try individual resources which had succeeded so often before. 
The result was that on the i8th of September Dr. von Rotten- 
burg, Werklischer Geheimer Oberregurungsrath (virtually the 
secretary to the chancellorship) called at our hotel and tendered 
me an invitation from the chancellor to lunch with him at one 
o'clock the following Saturday, the 22d, at Friedrichsruhe. The 
Dr. informed me that this was an unusual departure and insisted 
-that I be silent on the matter, for others might hope for a like 
favor and would thereby force the prince to do an unpleasant 
thing by refusing. He advised me to start at eight o'clock on 
Saturday morning and he would telegraph Count Rantzau, the 
chancellor's son-in-law and private secretary, to stop the train for 
me to alight. He suggested that I go in my usual traveller's 
dress, for the prince was a very plain man, and I would probably 
see only the family. I boarded the train suggested, expediting 
my baggage to Hamburg, where Willie would join me Sunday 
evening, he wishing to visit Potsdam. For two and a half hours 
the road ran through a flat and uninteresting country with 
several towns and villages and closely cultivated. We then 
traversed a fine rolling district, fairly well wooded, with pretty 
farm-houses and hamlets, some chateaux approached by avenues 
of trees and surrounded by small parks and a few towns old and 
quaint. The scenery was pleasing rural. At 12 o'clock we 
entered a large forest of beech, of many thousand acres, well 

534 



THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY BISMARCK'S NAME. 535 

stocked with stag and other deer, and in a half hour halted at 
Friedrichsruhe, Bismarck's private domain, which has been cut 
out of the great forest. 

In writing this chapter I shall mention some incidents and 
Avords which in themselves may seem trivial, but make up a whole 
which enabled me somewhat to look into the home life and 
private character of the man who, with Napoleon Bonaparte, make 
the two most remarkable characters of the 19th century — a man 
whom history will probably paint as one of the greatest of all 
times. For over 25 years Bismarck's name has been interwoven 
into the fabric which will go down as the history of the old 
world. In Europe, Asia, Africa, and the far-off islands of the 
boundless seas, students, during all this time, have been forced, 
when figuring out the destinies of men and peoples, to see this 
man's signet deeply imprinted upon every chart. Kings and em- 
perors have lived and died ; nations have arisen and others have 
<iisappeared from the world's map ; but in the biographies of the 
men and the annals of the peoples constantly appear indelible 
marks made by the daring genius and rugged force of this 
uncrowned autocrat. While all men have admired and respected 
the statesman and millions have hated him, few have seen the 
iTian and fewer still know any thing of him as a host, a husband, 
and a father. We read of Greece and Rome, and see their heroes 
stalking across history's page in flowing toga or accoutred in 
buckler and sword, and are almost surprised when we enter 
their tombs or look upon their votive tablets to find them men 
full of household fancies and overrunning with domestic affections. 
IBismarck, more than any other great modern character, is seen 
and measured only as a stern, relentless, and hard adviser of 
soldierly kaisers. The world scarcely realizes that he has a home 
— a home with all the sweet surroundings of that dearest of all 
xinsentient things, — and that in it he is a man of loving heart and 
full of tender sentiment. I was in that house only three hours, 
l)ut they were three hours of revelation. A traveller hears the 
"whinnying of an Arab horse when his dusky master comes in 
sight, and from that inarticulate greeting knows how kindly has 
been the wild wanderer of the desert to his dumb friend. In far- 
off Burmah he sees a crow steal rice out of the bowl from which a 
native takes his frugal meal, and learns how deeply into the heart 
of that brown-skinned man has sunken Siddartha's lesson of 
charity to all breathing things. A kind word and a look of love 
by a man to his wife ; the gentle but familiarly caressing touch of 
a woman's hand upon her husband's arm ; the fond assistance of 
a daughter to a father in some triviarmatter, and his loving look 
when he receives it ; the easy familiarity of friends to one of the 
world's great ones ; the little nameless acts in free and familiar 
life — these little things take a man's heart out of his impenetrable 
ibody and enable us to read its inner emotions more infallibly 



536 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

than would hours of his hottest asseverations as to what that heart 
contains. To enable my reader to see the Iron Prince as I saw 
him, in as few words as possible I will tell something of what was 
said and done in his house by him and his family, and what his 
guest said to bring out speech from his entertainers. Some things 
I shall keep back, for Prince Bismarck treated me so kindly, and 
what he said was so unreserved, that some utterances might 
possibly not have been of a character to be repeated. 

On my alighting from the train, which immediately moved off, 
a rather handsome young man, with blond complexion, walked 
up and said in perfect English : " Mr. Harrison, I am glad to see 
you. I am Count Rantzau." There was an open carriage in 
waiting. We drove to the residence, not 400 yards away and 
close to the railroad. On learning that I spoke a little German 
the count expressed jDleasure, for it would enable me to talk with 
his mother-in-law, who spoke no English. Just at the lodge gate 
quite a number of ladies and gentlemen were loitering, the count 
said " with the hope of seeing the poor chancellor, who has a 
hard time getting rest and retirement." Bismarck's residence 
was, before he acquired it, a sort of hotel, I think, in the forest 
which has for a great while been resorted to by Hamburgers. It 
is commodious, utterly unpretentious, but very home-like. Its 
interior is fitted up plainly, with none of the fussy finery which 
makes the modern rich man's house gaudy and artistic but utterly 
uncomfortable, and forces the owner to the smoking-room or ta 
the stable to find a spot in which he can be at ease. Inside and 
out Friedrichsruhe is simple, yet elegant in its simplicity — a fitting 
home for a man who cares nothing for externals and display, 
whose acts are and have been deals in the destinies of nations. I 
was immediately taken by the count, who soon after went out, 
into a moderately-sized reading- or sitting-room, and presented to 
the Princess Bismarck, her daughter, the Countess of Rantzau, 
Countess Stalberg, tte'e Princess Reuss, Countess Eickstedt von 
Peterswald, Fraulein Agnes Eickstedt, and Frau Oberin von 
Rentsow, the last four being friends visiting and staying with 
the family. My reception was one of absolute cordiality, indeed,^ 
as much so as if I had been an expected friend. They spoke of 
America and how they should like to visit it, and of my long 
journeyings. All spoke good English except the princess, who 
understood it enough to enable me to converse in German freely 
with her by occasionally interlarding an English word. She is a 
lady of pleasing appearance and deportment, entirely free from 
everything which could be termed mannerism, and full of that air 
which is so attractive and winning in an elderly woman, and 
which can be described by the simple term motherly. Her 
daughter is about 30, I should judge, full, plump, — but not too 
much so, above medium height, with cheerful oval face, decidedly 
pretty, and with an expression of rare sweetness. She has several 



FIRST SIGHT OF THE IRON PRINCE. 537 

children. I saw two of them, bright, rollicknig boys. Had I been 
a welcome friend the mother and daughter could not have 
treated me with more simple kindness and unobtrusive hospi- 
tality throughout my entire visit. I had been in the room a few 
minutes when the countess, looking out of the window, 
exclaimed: "Ah, there comes papa! " laying stress upon the last 
syllable, and at the same time leaving the front of the window for 
me. The ladies all rose and stood somewhat to the side, but so 
as to see out. Some 50 or more yards from the house I saw 
coming out of the park wood, a man fully six feet tall, broad- 
shouldered, full, but not corpulent, wearing a low-crowned soft felt 
hat, a full white cravat folded about his neck in old style, with- 
out shirt-collar, plain dark clothes, the coat rather carelessly 
buttoned— walking slowly towards the house with stately 
measured strides, and accompanied by two noble greyhounds, fat 
and dignified, keeping by his side with such even step that I 
could almost fancy they were measuring their gait by that of 
their master. I looked at him silently until he was within a few 
feet of the house. I noticed that his daughter was watching my 
face intently, and, I fancied, almost anxiously. I said half as if 
in soliloquy: "He will be able to keep Russia and Austria at 
arm's length for years to come." A glow of pleasure spread over 
the daughter's face. I then understood the expression I had 
noticed a few moments before. She had been watching me to 
see how his physical appearance affected me. He soon entered 
the room, shook hands with me almost warmly, saying he was 
glad I had come, for I had done good service, and he was pleased 
to tell me that he and all lovers of law were indebted to me. I 
at once understood why he had done me the honor of inviting 
me to his house. The princess repeated what I had said of his 
strength. He said he was glad I thought so well of his powers. 
After a few moments spent in his telling the ladies, who were 
interested listeners, of his walk in the forest, which had been 
somewhat extended, he offered his arm to the Countess Stalberg. 
The princess placed her hand upon my arm. We followed her 
husband to the breakfast-room. Bismarck took the head of the 
table, with Countess Stalberg at his right. Count Rantzau at the 
foot, the princess and her daughter sitting opposite each other on 
the middle sides, the other ladies between them and the foot, and 
I between the prince and princess. The dining-room was hand- 
some, but plain. The breakfast consisted of tenderloin steaks, 
cutlets, cold meat, and omelets, with red and white wines, fol- 
lowed by black coffee, and was finely prepared. Conversation at 
once became lively and wholly free, and was carried on in German 
and in English, which the prince at first spoke with a little hesi- 
tation, but afterwards with fluency and purity, and with slight 
accent. When I spoke in German and hesitated for a word 
Countess Rantzau frequently came to my relief in most charming 



538 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

manner. In this way the princess and I were enabled to keep up 
our share of the talking. In reply to the question as to the wine 
I preferred, I said I was fortunate in liking all pure wines, but I 
found certain kinds had a tendency to cause a gouty thickening 
of my fingers. " So they do with me," said the prince, at the 
same time holding up both hands and working his fingers by 
opening and shutting them, adding that he had not much faith in 
doctors, but that his understood his case, and interdicted any but 
white wine, and of that very sparingly ; that he was very fond of 
old hock, but it did not go well with him now, and he was forced 
to drink a newer one, and then only at dinner. Socialism was 
spoken of. The prince showed his hostility to it, but thought we 
would not sufi'er from it in America, for our great political parties 
made no alliances with it. I said that they voted for members of one 
or the other parties, that " at one of my elections they had voted 
largely for me." " Is that so ? Then you were very ungrateful." 
I said he was mistaken ; that we got some good reforms from them, 
and he should not confound the socialists with us with the an- 
archists. That they came together and ran -with the same machine 
when the eight-hour movement was inaugurated; that socialism 
with us was not radical as in Germany, and could not become 
dangerous, because the poor man acquiring property soon became 
conservative. "Yes, I know," he rejoined, " but the leaders are 
innately bad, and only want to gain for themselves, and care not for 
the cost ; and many, possibly the bulk, of the followers were simply 
blind ! " During the breakfast I endeavored to bring up as many 
topics as possible, and I think the Chancellor saw my intent, and 
assisted me by readily going from one subject to another. The 
princess turned the conversation to my travels. I said : " I had 
been many times in Europe. Had seen Mt. Blanc, and had gone 
to Asia, and had seen Mt. Everest. I had been to the Caucasus 

-to see Elbruz, and was now in Germany " I paused, which 

caused all to look up at me, when I added — " to see Bismarck." 
The ladies laughed and applauded. He bowed with an amused 
smile. 1 told him how much good my travels had done me, and 
suggested to him the propriety of his going around the world. 
He said " he was too old and had too much to do ; that he be- 
longed to his country, and that as long as it demanded his ser- 
vices he could not think of rest." I told him I had found great 
relaxation, when the cares of office were pressing, by going to the 
circus or the minstrels, where I could laugh. " Ah ! " said he, 
grimly, "the newspapers afford me comedy enough." "Yes," I 
rejoined, "and I see they charge you with inconsistency because 
you claim a freeman's right to change your mind." " Of course 
I change my mind when I find I have been wrong, and I also yield 
my opinions when I find others differing from me who have equal 
rights with me. I have no right to set up my opinions against 
those of all others, even when I am certain that I am right." I 



A 7 ■ BISMARCK'S TABLE. 539 

asked if the old emperor was not a very firm man. " Yes, firm 
almost to obstinacy on matters he thoroughly understood, but on 
most matters of state he confided greatly in those who had charge 
of them. He was very trustful of those who had his confidence." 
He then spoke som.ewhat at large, very feelingly, of William I. I 
told him that we were in Ceylon when the news of his death 
reached us, and that a rumor had gotten abroad that the crown 
prince had asked for his, Bismarck's, resignation, and I was asked 
what I thought of it. He looked up quickly and said : " What 
did you reply?" "I told them Frederick had too much sense 
for that." The old Chancellor's eyes kindled when he straightened 
himself up and said : " Mr. Harrison, my sovereigns have always 
demanded my services, for they knew I was ever ready to retire ; 
I have been but the people's servant." I told him of our hearing 
of Emperor Frederick's death at Vladikavkas, and I was pleased 
b}^ the regret expressed by officers we met on the mountains. 
"Ah, yes," said Bismarck rather sardonically, "they had an idea 
he would change his father's policy. In that the}^ were mistaken." 
Speaking of a distinguished man whom I liked, he said : " He is 
amiable enough, but a fool in politics ; a bad politician, and gave us 
any amount of trouble." " You believe, then, in such a thing as a 
good politician ? " " Why, certainly I do. No man can be a 
successful statesman unless he be, too, an astute politician." A 
paper just engrossed (I now suspect the memorial presented 
three days afterwards to the emperor, urging the prosecution of 
Prof. Geffcken) was laid on the table. He said: "You see, Mr. 
Mayor, I am down here in retirement and yet I have to work. 
I have not failed to work a single day in 20 odd years." The 
Princess interjected: " For 26 years." "Yes, for 26 years not 
a single day." " Let me suggest that your Highness take a rest and 
travel incogiiito." He rejoined: " I don't know, I have been too 
busy ; I am afraid I could not bear the rust." " And," I interjected, 
■" a little afraid, also, to be where you cannot have your finger 
in the European pie." He smiled at the sally, but the ladies all 
laughed heartily, and Countess Stalberg added : " The pie would 
be a poor affair if his fingers were out of it." I said I, too, had 
feared rust, and to prevent it had written very largely of what I 
had seen — that it was sometimes hard labor and yet a rest from 
the past, and then told him that Dr. von Rottenberg had enjoined 
upon me silence as to this visit, but that I hoped he would release 
me from the obligation ; that our people, and particularly my 
German friends, would be delighted to hear of what I saw and 
heard at his table. "Well, yes, I suppose so"; adding that the 
doctor did not wish him to hurt the feelings of others by refus- 
ing to see them, but that he wished to see me because I had 
helped to bring the anarchists to justice. I laughed and told 
him the political papers had bitterly attacked me because I had 
not arrested them in advance when they made their violent 



S40 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

speeches, and thus to have prevented the Haymarket crime. He 
quickly said : " You did just right ; you were not afraid, but you 
struck at the proper moment." He evidently was familiar with 
that bitter night. He then inquired particularly about the acts 
of the authorities after the terrible crime, and I saw that he did 
not agree with me in drawing abroad line between the anarchists 
and socialists. I told him I had been present when Wilhelm had 
landed at Peterhof, and how I had been impressed with his bear- 
ing, and that Petersburgers were flattered by his driving about 
unattended by guards, and that I thought the czar made a mis- 
take in showing a want of confidence. He exclaimed: "Yes, his 
father showed confidence and got killed for it." The princess 
interjected : " Poor man ! I do not wonder that he feels uneasy." 
" They have a bad habit in Russia," said the prince, " a bad habit 
of trying to kill kings — since Peter the Great's time they have 
run that way." I told him how, during the anarchist troubles, I 
had received letters written in blood, but that wholly unattended 
I had ridden in the most excited districts. " Yes, yes, but you 
were in America and among Americans, and not in Russia." I 
spoke of the well-dressed people about his gate waiting to get a 
peep at him. He said : " He was a worker and did not like to 
make a show of himself, and that when the emperor was visiting 
Friedrichsruhe a few weeks before, crowds of people came on the 
road hoping to see him, but that he, too, said he had lately had 
enough of that kind of thing." When coffee and cigars came 
on I laughingly exclaimed : " We in America think that Bismarck 
knows the American hog, and that if he lets it get over the fron- 
tier it will stay at the German table, but that perhaps he did not 
know the American man so well that when one gets to Prince 
Bismarck's table he would never know when to leave." He 
laughed heartily and explained the pork question to the ladies, 
who at first looked rather shocked at the first part of the joke. 
He then said he would have to go to work shortly, but he 
would give me all the time he possibly could. I told him that 
I had to disobey Dr. von Rottenberg's injunction by telling my 
son, who was travelling with me, of my visit, but that Willie told 
me to say to him that his constant silence and eternal gratitude 
could be had if the prince would write a line and sign his name 
to it. He laughed at the young man's device to get his autograph. 
He said he might possibly write his name but not the 
line. I added we might then put a dangerous line over the 
name. " I see, it might be a due-bill, but we will block that 
game. Tell your son if he will hang an anarchist I will write an 
autograph letter to him." He then had some photographs 
brought to the table and selected a large one and wrote his name 
under it and the date, saying: " Keep that to remind you of this 
pleasant day." The princess took it from me and enclosed it in 
an envelope. I said to her : " Now, will not your Highness 



TABLE-TALK. 541 

write your name also across the envelope ? " She did so, and I 
handed it to him saying : " If you will now put your name under 
it I will have Bismarck properly dominated by his wife." He 
laughingly did so, saying: "That is the way the world over." 
He handed the paper to his daughter, who wrote her name under 
his, and then the count signed under his wife. All were de- 
lighted at my thus getting two autographs from the prince, who 
is, I learn, very averse to giving them. The princess had not 
permitted the pen (a new quill) he wrote with, to be used by any 
other. She handed it to me with the remark : " It never wrote 
but one name, and that but once. Keep it as a souvenir of this 
visit." She then sent out for a beautifully bound small auto- 
graph album, and requested me to write my name in it. 
The album was about a third full — a couple of pages before the 
one I wrote on was the name of Count Kalnocky, the Austrian 
prime-minister, who had been at Friedrichsruhe for three days 
and had left the day before, and I think of Signor Crispi, the 
Italian premier, and other distinguished men. I turned the 
leaves back a page or two and read the signature of Wilhelm II, 
Further back was that of the Emperor Frederick, and near the 
first page that of the old Kaiser Wilhelm. I remarked that my 
name would in such company go down to history. She replied : 
" As long as the Bismarck family lives." She then told me to 
write the date under my name that she might have a souvenir of 
this pleasant day, and exacted a promise that I should send her 
my photo from Hamburg. Fraulein Eickstedt brought a fan for 
my autograph. On one leaf was Count Kalnocky's, but not Bis- 
marck's. I suspected that she wished him to write his now while 
he was in so generous a mood. Seeing that the prince did not 
smoke I expressed some surprise, for I had always heard he was 
devoted to the weed. He said he had been forced to give up 
cigars, though very fond of them — that for many years he smoked 
almost constantly ; he would throw away his cigar on going to bed, 
and would reach out for one immediately on waking ; that he was 
now 73 years old and had to be careful. He smoked a pipe with 
light Deutsch tobacco after dinner. I said I was 63, and a rather 
hard rider, but I feared I was smoking too much. " Oh," said the 
prince, " when I was 63 nothing hurt me, and I rode 20 miles every 
day on horseback, and smoked all the time." Speaking of rest, 
he said his best rest was lying easily in a room all to himself. 
"Yes," I interjected, "and keeping your brain at hard labor." 
He laughed and went on : " Or walking in the park or forest, 
listening to the birds sing and the winds gently sighing among the 
branches." "That is a new phase in your Highness' character. 
The world does not dream that Bismarck is poetical and senti- 
mental." " Full of both," he replied, " but especially of senti- 
ment." He told me his forest was three miles long and about four 
wide, and so stocked with deer that they were proving destructive 



542 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

to the trees ; that he never shot now, but was at one time very 
fond of the sport ; but at 73 he was forced to give up his old 
hock, his cigars, and to give the deer a free forest. I asked the 
princess if she never indulged in a cigarette. With a gesture 
of amused horror, she said : "Oh no." I apologized by saying 
that the last princess I had the honor of talking with blew 
cigarette smoke from her rosy lips, and named her. " But she 
comes by that naturally," said the prince, " for though a Ger- 
man princess she was a Russian by birth, and a decided beauty." 
They then spoke very kindly of the lady, whom he and the prin- 
cess had known in Russia years ago when unmarried. I saw that 
the iron man was of melting metal when woman's beauty was in 
question. This, too, was further shown by his gentle tones and 
manner to a very pretty young Jewess, Fraulein Alexander, from 
Hamburg, who with her mother had called, and by the prince's 
request had been shown into the breakfast-room just as the table 
was being vacated. Something said caused me to acknowledge 
that I acted under a very heterodox maxim, especially in executive 
matters, — that is, never to do to-day what I can put off until to- 
morrow. " You are right," he said ; " it might have been a maxim 
of mine, for I have acted up to it. Each day brings its full duties 
and enough of them. Perform them well, and then wait for the 
next day to do the things then necessary." I added that I had 
found the next day often brought' new and valuable light, and 
besides the necessity for prompt action ofttimes focalizes the 
energies of the brain. His reply, which was extended, expressed 
thorough acquiescence in the proposition. In reply to a question 
as to the number of my children, I said : " I have four, but have 
lost several little ones." " We, too," said the Prince, " have buried 
a child," or children, I forget which. One of the lady visitors 
seemed surprised at this ; and then he and the princess spoke very 
.feelingly of their lost little ones. Bismarck's countenance when in 
conversation lights up greatly, and his smile is very pleasant, but 
the whole face drops back very quickly to one of rather severely 
reflective cast. His manner at the table was easy and affable, 
almost gentle, and there were nameless little things which revealed 
a softness in his character that I had imagined he lacked even in his 
home life. I have given only a few of the things that he said or 
were said to him directly ; all at the table joined in the general 
talk, which was absolutely free from all restraint or conventionality. 
So kind and unobstrusive was the hospitality of all, that one 
looking on, and not knowing our respective positions, would have 
thought that I was an honoring guest instead of being the honored 
one. We were at table not far from two hours, a very unusual 
thing for her father, the countess said, — " that is, unusual for a 
breakfast." Had the Prince been utterly unknown to me, that 
breakfast would have made me pronounce him a most genial host, a 
kind husband, and an affectionate father. At table all paid most 



BISMARCK l^HE WORKER. 545 

respectful attention to his every word, the attention on the part 
of the visiting ladies being that of idolatry, that of his wife and 
daughter of devotion. When he left to go to his workroom he 
expressed regret that he could not give me more time, but that 
for the next two or more hours he did not belong to himself. 
I told him how much I had enjoyed my visit, and ended with : 
" Keep Europe in peace and the world will be your debtor." 
" That is my end and hope. Good-bye ! a pleasant voyage, and safe 
return to your home and family." I stood as he walked off with 
his private secretary, and although I am never greatly impressed by 
rank and high station, I was almost awed by that retreating mass 
of brain and will-power. So much had the man's kindly inner self 
been revealed, that unconsciously I felt as if parting from a friend. 
The princess and her guests went out upon a veranda, bidding me 
good-bye, and leaving me with the Countess Rantzau, who wished 
to get me the family photographs. To her question as to when I 
would again be in Europe, I replied not before two or three years, 
when my youngest daughter would be out of school. After inquir- 
ing about her, she said : " Tell her to get her German well up and to 
come over to pay us a visit ; you will bring her, will you not ? " To 
my expression of pleasure at the kind and hearty invitation, she 
told me she was glad I had come, that it had pleased her father, 
and had been a rest to him, and added that I had gotten from 
him what she was afraid to ask for herself, — his autographs, which 
were desired by some of her friends. I laughingly said : " I gen- 
erally get what I particularly want." She said : " It seems so, for 
we were all surprised when he broke over his rules by inviting you 
to breakfast." When I bade the charming lady good-bye her 
manner was as unaffectedly warm and kind as if I had been an 
elderly relation. I walked to the station. The local train was 
made up there for Hamburg. I had been seated in the car for a 
few moments when I saw the countess walking rapidly towards us. 
As soon as she saw me she called out : " Mamma says she did not 
sufficiently tell you good-bye. She is coming to do so." Sure 
enough, there was the aged lady, with Countess Stalberg, walking 
quite rapidly, followed by a man drawing a small carriage chair. I 
went to meet her. She told me she thought I was coming out 
upon the veranda, and was surprised to learn that I was gone. 
She had wished to tell me good-bye and to wish me a safe voyage 
home, and hoped I would find my children all well. She also 
wanted to tell me to be sure and not forget my photograph from 
Hamburg. She stood some time by the car talking with that 
warm-hearted self-forgetful manner rarely seen so well marked as 
in a well-born German woman. I asked her how long she had 
been married. She said 41 years. " Then in nine years I will 
drink the health of your Highness and the Prince when you cele- 
brate your golden wedding." " Would you come to our golden 
wedding if you should be in Europe ?" " Yes, indeed, and from 



544 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

America too." " Then," said she, " you must come. Consider 
yourself invited. You are the only one I have yet asked." Her 
manner showed that she was talking from her warm heart. Her 
daughter quickly added: "And to the diamond wedding too." 
"Oh, I fear I will not last that long." " Yes, you will; papa and 
mamma are older than you, and they are going to live for their 
diamond wedding." Just then the bell rang. With warm shaking 
of hands I left them. As I stepped into the car the Countess 
Stalberg cried out: " Remember, Mr. Harrison, there is but one 
Everest and one Bismarck." I replied: "That's true. Good-bye! 
many long and happy years to you all." Thus ended a most 
charming visit, charming not simply in that it was to the home of 
one of the world's great men, for if he had been but a plain man 
the kindly hospitality of himself and wife and daughter, the 
marked disposition to make every thing pleasant to the temporary 
guest, a disposition so unobtrusive that it was not observed at the 
time, but is recalled with a species of surprise ; the free and genial 
manners of the ladies who were regular guests in the house ; — these 
things made my visit one to be remembered with genuine pleasure.. 
Added to this was the presence of a man who is and has been for 
nearly a third of a century playing upon a board where real kings, 
bishops, castles, knights, and breathing pawns have been the men, 
all pushed back and forth at his will — and as if they were but 
blocks of ivory and wood in his hand, — this man for the time being 
no longer one of the world's great ones, but simply the kind hus- 
band, the gentle father, and the agreeable host, and for the time 
being also so acting and so acted to that his inner self, the man, was 
being more or less revealed. 

We can measure and weigh the force of the sun's rays in any 
region by studying the fibre and color of plants and flowers ; so, 
too, can we measure and weigh the heart-forces of a strong, brainy 
.man, — a man of great nerve-power, by studying the tone and 
bearing of those constantly in intimate association with him. If 
his heart be utterly cold or always locked within himself, the effect 
upon those about him is analogous to that of sunlight denied to 
animals and plants. Fishes and insects live in great caves, but are 
blind and colorless. Plants in dark vaults grow, but are devoid of 
every tint. I watched the wife and daughter of Bismarck. The 
helianthus looks not more readily to the morning sun, or follows 
him more earnestly throughout the day, than do these two women 
follow the husband and father in look and action — follow him with 
loving devotion. Were he at home and in his family the stern, 
relentless man his public life makes him thought, these ladies 
would have had the fountains of their hearts more or less dried 
up. They would not have shown, at least in his presence, the warm 
kindliness I saw displayed. Had he been the hard autocrat at home, 
his presence would have been a source of constraint, and would 
have thrown about him an atmosphere of chilliness ; but there was 



DEVOTION OF HIS FAMILY. 5.45 

just the opposite. All listened to him with interest and marked 
respect, but it was the interest and respect of those who really 
wished to hear his words. He and they were unaffectedly kindly 
towards each other, and as much so to me as they could have been 
had I been doing them a favor by coming to the house. Am I 
wrong in thinking that directly and through those about him I 
read something of the man's heart, and found it to be one of 
much natural warmth and gentleness? 



CHAPTER L. , 

HAMBURG— AN INTERESTING CITY— QUAINT HANOVER— LEAN-TO 
OLD HOUSES— RUN TO FRANKFORT— THE RHINE. 

Brussels, September 30, 1888. 

Hamburg is a very beautiful city. A fine lake spreads itself 
in the very heart of the town, along whose borders are charming 
walks, bright cafes and noble buildings. Canals cut the city in 
many directions, from out of whose waters lift quaint old houses 
with sharp, gabled roofs, of four and five stories, each upper one 
projecting, on brackets, one, two, or more feet over the one be- 
low, looking as if they were trying to meet each other about the 
sky's line over the narrow canals. In the centre of the gable, 
high up near the roof-comb, project beams from which suspend 
on pulleys long ropes to hoist goods from water barges to big 
folding-doors in the centre of each story. Into these doors en- 
tered the wealth of many lands when the city was so rich a mem- 
ber of the Hanseatic League. The same old blackened beam 
projects, but newer cordage now lifts up the rich freightage 
of prosperous commerce, for Hamburg is to-day the third or 
fourth in point of commercial tonnage of European ports. She 
grows apace, and the 100,000 people of a few years ago have 
now become nearly, if not quite, 500,000. Her lake and canals 
are not exactly stinking, and in that there has been great im- 
provement since I was last here, in '75, but they have that pe- 
culiar odor which pervades the atmosphere about still waters, and 
the entire city is redolent of fish, tar, cordage and of a thousand and 
one things which go down upon and up from the sea. The people 
are quite fussy in their fashion and fine gear, but it is the fussi- 
ness of commercial folk and wholly different from that of Berlin, 
where one insensibly reaches the conclusion he is in the capital of 
an empire. There are, too, many quaint old lean-to buildings in 
the older part of the town along streets not 20 feet wide, and along 
the canals not much wider. It is very charming to look at two 
old, narrow-fronted houses leaning together with their lofty, 
steeply pitched roofs, in which are two or three stories of lofts 
overtopping four or more stories below, each so low that a tall 
man has to dodge the joists above when he walks. These 
houses were built several hundred years ago and lean against 
each other with a sort of John-Anderson-my-Jo affection. Tear 
down either house the other would fall. Like good old mar- 

546 



QUAINT OLD STREETS. 547 

ried couples they have stood the brunt of many storms to- 
gether, and must stand and tumble together at the end. There 
are many of these old structures in Hamburg, making it, next 
to Hanover, the quaintest of German towns. That is, they are 
in parts the quaintest, though modern structures in both so 
abound and are so fine that the older streets are overlooked 
by many tourists. In many other old towns modern improve- 
ments have been so few, that an odor of oldness and an air 
of quaintness predominate and characterize the whole, but in 
all to a much less degree than in parts of these two northern 
cities. At Hanover in many streets one feels he is living in a 
past age. A cluster of old lean-to houses meets one's eye 
constant!}', leaning against each other and over the streets 
as if striving to shake hands across the narrow ways, and 
looking so ancient that when a woman appears in an upper 
window one feels like addressing her as the wife or daugh- 
ter of some old burgher of three and four centuries gone by. 
Heire upon an architrave, spanning a musty door-way, in queer 
letters deep cut into the stone, is a quotation from the Bible, 
showing the religious sentiment of the owner when he stood in 
buckram and broad, flapping top-boots, to superintend the build- 
ing of the house in which he was to live and to rear up his chil- 
dren in the fear of the Lord. One passes through the door-way 
and mounts steep stairways, winding about through low stories, 
dropping his head as he ascends, for men were not expected in 
those days to go heavenward with too erect fronts. Little rooms 
open from each landing, in which are good-natured women and 
children amid clothes-lines stretching from ceiling beams, and all 
redolent of fresh washing and sauer-kraut. Up one goes from 
story to story, passing a little coop in which a goose genth' 
cackles, for German townspeople, as well as the country folk, are 
believers in goose-grease for measles and whooping-cough. The 
upper story is reached (so the curious one thinks at least). The 
rooms are hardly seven feet high, but still each little eight by 
nine room is tenanted and little children wonder what the stran- 
ger wishes, but the good frau is not offended when she is told 
how pretty is the old-time house. The curious visitor is about 
to descend when his eye catches another stair, almost as steep as 
a ladder and nearly hidden in a recess in the wall ; up he goes, 
and is in a loft black with the smoke of by-gone centuries, filled 
with rags and old-time chests and cupboards black with age. It 
is a rag-picker's loft ; his shop is then recollected as being below 
in the narrow little courtyard ; old scraps of lace and embroidery 
hang on lines, and the dark chests are padlocked. How they got 
up those narrow steps one can scarcely guess, but they are there, 
and one almost whispers, lest the fairy form of fraulein, dead tv/o 
or three hundred years ago, may open the lid of a chest and ask 
why the intruder comes. Still another loft, and perhaps a third, 



548 A RACE WITH THE SUJV. 

are cramped in beneath the ridge-pole. The roof tiles are 
shiny in polislied smoke stains, and the light of day comes 
through many a chink, but the tiles are bent and keep out the 
rain, though they let in light enough to save windows. The 
rafters are rough-hewn and massive, and filled with nail heads 
driven for clothes-lines to hang to when Martin Luther was fight- 
ing the devil in his dreams and electors and palatines were bat- 
tling to tear down or to maintain the faith of ages. An old 
residence with the date 1527 on its door lintel, and yet filled 
with human tenants, impresses one with its age more than 
does a temple 2,000 or 3,000 years old, in which jackals and 
bats are the only living habitants. Present human life forms a 
living link with the dead past, and one feels he is at least sur- 
rounded by the ghosts of three-centuries-ago dead, whereas in 
the ancient temple he feels that myths alone ever walked among 
the massive columns. These latter awake no human sympathy 
in the breathing present for the long-silent past. 

The new city of Hanover impresses one as quite a capital. 
Not so Hamburg, which is a town of bustle and business. But 
the Hamburger has fine theatres and some churches of great 
beauty. The new chime bells of St. Nicholas had just been com- 
pleted when we were there on Sunday, the 23d. We somehow 
or other generally stumble at the right moment on what is going 
on in cities we visit. We went to the church to be present at 
the morning service. A sweet strain of music came from the 
lofty tower,^ — it is 473 feet high. The new and fine-toned chime- 
bells were being tried for the first time ; tune after tune was 
played very finely and I was loath to go inside, but did. A 
beautiful anthem was being rendered by a choice choir to the 
congregation which packed the church in reverent attention. 
The sermon over, we went out, and still the music was coming 
-from far above as if awakened by celestial hands on celestial 
chords. For three-quarters of an hour weird strain after strain 
was rendered, and when grand " Old Hundred" pealed forth in 
its solemn heart-reaching tones, I listened and felt no Catholic 
could help feeling grateful to Luther for that noble score. I 
think he was its composer, at least I am sure the air I listened to 
was his, though I may have misnamed it. I can never remember 
airs, much to the merriment of my musical boys. I am as full 
of music and poetry as an egg is of meat, and all the fuller 
for that none would ever come out of me. As soon as this air 
was finished we hurried off; I did not wish to hear others. How 
long they were kept up I do not know. 

The canals of Hamburg, while being marked features in add- 
ing to the quaint picturesqueness of the old town, are not, as in 
Venice, component parts of the beauty of the city. The hand- 
some fronts of the houses are on streets, and it is their rear walls 
whose foundations are washed by the waters. 



SWEET SCENERY. 549 

The run from that city to Hanover was pretty — fine old towns, 
handsome farm lands, and the queerest of farm-houses and farm 
villages, with their half-hipped roofs, all the latter in fresh-looking 
red tile. Hanover is a beautiful city, aside from its old streets 
and houses. The public buildings are fine, its drives and parks 
exquisite, and the people jolly and gay. The cafes at night are 
crowded, but we saw but little coffee or chocolate used. Bavarian 
beer, however, was quaffed in surprising quantity. I always like 
to talk to Hanoverians. Their German is so distinct that I can 
follow them better than any other people in the father-land. 

We took rail thence to Frankfort-on-the-Main. It gave us a 
charming ride. Few roads in Europe present more pleasing 
scenery. Nothing grand, but much that is sweetly rural, and 
a great deal full of the mildly picturesque. For some hours low 
mountains lay to our right, with wooded slopes toward the higher 
ground, and fine farm lands below. In the distance, to the left, 
were the outlying hills of the Hartz mountains, where every dell 
has its legend and every steep hill its brocken. Everywhere the 
peasantry were plowing and sowing small grain, or were busy 
afield gathering potatoes, of which tall bags stood in line across 
the fields like whitish sentries. In some localities the land was 
broken by two yoke of oxen, but generally with one or two teams 
of horses. Scarcely any cattle were seen grazing. Flocks of 
geese were frequent, each attended by a gooseherd. Cows were 
hitched to light wagons drawing in grain or carrying manure out 
to the fields. The cows are not idle ladies in this land ; besides 
their more gentle duties they do their share of farmwork. I no- 
where saw women at heavy labor as in Austria and Russia. They 
follow the reaper, bind and gather crops, but only the men seem 
to perform labor demanding strong muscles. In Austria, how- 
ever, women are hod carriers and stone-packers. We saw nowhere 
in Germany women made beasts of burden, though they are, 
heaven knows, hard enough worked to satisfy the command that 
as a part of man they should earn their bread by the sweat of 
their faces. Indeed their whole bodies are forced to reek in sweat. 
People, especially the communists, pour out their dissatisfaction 
with the laws of glorious America. But their grumblings are not 
half as silly as those of our women. They are pampered and coaxed, 
wheedled perhaps, and sometimes cheated, but when compared 
with their sisters in most lands our women are queens; and when 
they are forced to work for a living feel themselves down-trodden. 

Besides the forests on the upper mountains, large wooded tracts 
and copses crown the summits of lower hills and creep down their 
sides into the valleys. Here and there are elegant chateaux. 
Schloss Marienburg, built by Queen Maria of Hanover, is one of 
the most picturesque palaces in Europe. It is a great mediseval 
building, with towers and turrets, beautifully nestled on a lofty 
hill in noble timber. On several rocky eminences and abrupt 



550 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

conical liills are old ruins with tall towers and old dungeon-keeps, 
very romantic and charming. Gottingen, world-famous for its 
university, recalls musty memories and student duels. Near this 
fine old literary town the road climbs from the river Leine for 
several miles a lofty divide, showing beautiful valleys with villages 
and hamlets and woods and silver streams far below, and then 
drops down by an even descent to the Weser, along which and 
the Fulda it ascends to Munden. We were along here generally 
high upon the mountain slope, with the silvery river much below. 
The low mountains are for. miles clothed in rich young forests, 
now borrowing autumnal tints. Ruins peep from among the 
trees on pointed foot-hills, while villages and hamlets are nestled 
in orchards and fruity gardens. Few spots are to be seen any- 
where more deliciously sweet than Munden, with its orchards and 
pointed roofs, steeples and old towers, down in the neck, formed 
by the junction of the Fulda with the Werra. The road here 
drops from the mountain side and bends in beautiful curves 
around the old tree-embowered town, as if the engineer was think- 
ing as much of the beautiful view it permits as the ease of loco- 
motion. Near Cassel, also, we had fine views. The number of 
towns and large villages along our road is surprising, I suppose 
owing to the rail following closely the line of the old carriage 
road, along which population has been for ages accumulating. 
But I have given so many of my many letters to descriptions of 
scenery that I forbear dwelling longer now. I love it so much 
that my pen becomes a loving one when I begin to describe a 
view which sinks deeply into not only the eye but far down into 
the heart. One very pretty feature of many miles of this road is 
made up of fine old mills, now on tolerable-sized streams, and 
then on the same when, as we run up, they become so small as to 
be almost lost in the long grass of green meadows. 
- I would have liked much to stop at quaint old Marburg, a mass 
of pointed-roofed, tall houses, hugging a high hill, on which lifts 
an old castle. So closely are the houses packed on the hill-side 
that each upper one seems to be erected upon the inner roof of 
the one next below it. Here it was that the reformers met, about 
1530, to settle disputed points of the new faith, and where Luther 
answered every argument of Melancthon in opposition to the 
actual presence by the one single assertion, showing his strict 
adherence to the Bible's words: " This is my body." Again and 
again the mild and able scholar would come around to his argu- 
ment. Bluff old Martin had but one answer, and that was the 
words of Christ. Striking the table with the book, he exclaimed : 
" Hoc est corpus meum," and ended the discussion. Brave old 
Martin Luther! Whatever his opponents may say of his faults, 
they must confess his was a sturdy heart, and the literal Bible 
was his only guide. His was a great, stalwart body, full, it was 
said, of human passion. But he bravely fought his passions as he 



COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. 551 

fought the devil when he appeared to his excited imagination. 
His was a good fight. He not only brought into full day a mighty 
revolution and a new creed, but he purified the church he left. 
Its better elements soon got control and drove out the money- 
changers, who sometimes get into the temple of the Lord. 

We enjoyed Frankfort much, with its fine streets, beautiful 
tree-embowered residences, and splendid palm-garden. It has, too, 
some quaint old buildings, fine churches, and good collections. 
The Ariadne is one of the best things in modern marble. We 
revelled in Rudesheimer and old legends along storied and castled 
Rhine ; we looked with admiration upon that Gothic triumph, the 
Cologne Cathedral ; walked and sat in its grand nave and aisles, 
and bathed in floods of glorious light, pouring through the old 
pictured windows; listened to the deep tones of its organ as they 
rolled among the noble columns, and were caught and mellowed 
among the vaultings of the nave 150 feet above, to be returned to 
us in glorious ripeness. Again and again we visited the splendid 
pile, wandering with our eyes among its forest of airy pinnacles, 
and climbing its towers from point to point till our vision swept, 
'512 feet above, into the blue sky. I remember how as a 
young man, in 185 1, 1 gazed with admiration upon the unfinished 
pile, the broken tower, with its old wooden crane, which had 
waited there for long centuries, ready to resume its task, pinnacle 
upon pinnacle about the roof crumbling and scaling away ; I 
wondered then if the dream of Gerard would ever be a finished 
whole, and envied the future traveller who might visit it. It is a 
grand pile, but, as I think I said some months since, if the Lord 
should choose His dwelling-place on earth. He would never abide 
in a tomb-like Gothic church. From Cologne, through the sweet 
lands about Aix la Chapelle, we quitted the father-land, but I 
hope not for the last time. 

We found Brussels a beautiful city, and not the dull one I 
thought it 37 years ago. It is thoroughly modern, and has more 
social red-tape than any other European capital. How one can 
find any thing to make the appointment of Minister to Belgium 
worth accepting, is hard to conceive. Most cordially I congratu- 
lated my friend. Judge Tree, on his promotion to St. Petersburg. 
Belgium is a prosperous land, and though the most densely 
populated country on the globe, sends but few emigrants abroad. 



CHAPTER LI. 

WONDERFUL, FASCINATING PARIS— IMPROVEMENTS OF THE 

EMPIRE— RECOLLECTIONS OF DECEMBER, 1851 

—MARKETS OF PARIS. 

Paris, October 14, 1888. 

From Brussels to Paris the road traverses a country not unin- 
teresting, but devoid of characteristics to make it, in such letters 
as these, worthy of description ; and although we had yet to 
traverse nearly 6,000 miles before reaching the goal in our " race 
with the sun," there was to me no more of that charm of novelty 
which had enabled us to enjoy our, up to now, laborious journey- 
ings. The old man of the party would, from this on, take his 
ease. To the young man, however, the real culmination was but 
reached. He was told to take advantage of his short opportuni- 
ties, and to see and study as best he could. Paris and London, 
next to one other, are the two most remarkable cities the world 
had ever known. These two vast hives may be studied as the 
very epitomes of the great book of human nature. The one of 
man as a cultivated worshipper of the beautiful, the aesthetic, and 
the refined ; as an intense seeker of pleasure ; a laughing, idle 
lover of ease, or as a reckless sybarite ; the other of man, an earn- 
est toiler along the rugged paths of ambition, or a delving, sordid, 
worming offspring of greed; the home of the grandest type of 
manhood, and of the lowest representative of vice. In Paris one 
can drift along with a moving crowd with nothing to do, yet 
never wearying, for about him are thousands as aimless as him- 
self, and, though he speak to none and hear none speak, he has a 
constant companionship and a felt but unexpressed sympathy, 
which makes care and ennui an impossibility. He saunters along 
the streets and boulevards and jostles against others, who are 
never offended, for they, too, are idle saunterers, and are not cer- 
tain but that themselves were at fault. He stands before a show- 
window, and treads upon some one's toes, who begs pardon, iox he 
has put his foot in the way. He takes an afternoon walk along 
the mighty thoroughfares to get rid of time pleasantly. He meets 
and passes a hundred thousand engaged in the same undertaking. 
He does this day after day and week after week, and can be posi- 
tive that but comparatively few of those seen to-day were his co- 
partners in idleness the day before. For, during the year, they 

552 



CHARMING PARIS. 553 

number a million, not from Paris alone, but from the butterflies 
and the honey-consumers of the civilized world. To the man of 
taste and to the studious dreamer, Paris makes unnecessary any 
individual companionship — except what springs up with one who 
temporarily occupies the seat next him at the restaurant, in the 
cafe, the out-door concert, or on the deck of an excursion steamer 
or omnibus. The motto of every one met is " // faut s'aatiiser," 
and every one is ready to give his or her aid in this Parisian 
devoir. Not only are all polite and ready to meet one halfway, 
from etiquette, but from the universal demand for amusement. 
Politeness is not confined to the better classes, but the common- 
est and poorest laborer in his working blouse knows its forms and 
rules as well as the habitue of St. Germain. The same terms 
used in the salons of the nobles are also at the tongue's end of the 
soiled toiler in the Faubourg St. Antoine, of the ragged street 
gamin, or of the worn-out old rag-picker. The accent and patois 
alone show any difference between the expressions of the highest 
and of the lowest. One, therefore, need fear no coarse repulse 
to his advances, it matters not who is, for the time being, his 
neighbor. 

Every shop window is arranged for aesthetic effect, so that the very 
streets are museums, where one can, with no other cost than being 
somewhat footsore, see, enjoy, and study the beautiful, and he al- 
ways has company, who, be they male or female, are ready to inter- 
change opinions on what he observes. Except at the hours when 
people move to or from business, all whom he meets seem to have 
his occupation — seeking enjoyment. I remember once long ago 
being with a party looking down a boulevard, where many thou- 
sands could be seen from our vantage-ground. One of my com- 
panions offered a wager he could in two minutes make this 
multitude do as he would do. The wager accepted, he stepped 
to the edge of the sidewalk and looked intently at the sky. One 
after another the passers followed his example, to see what he so 
anxiously watched. In an incredibly short time every one in 
sight was stopping and looking aloft. I doubt not the contagion 
went far beyond the turn of the street, which we could see. He 
won the wager. " Chaqiie bourse a ses plaisiers " is truer in 
Paris than in any other city. A meal, a play, a ball, a concert is 
at hand in each and every quarter, to be had for prices ranging 
from a few sous up to as many francs ; each the same as every 
other, but differing in quality, though not in quantity. A steak 
or roast dinner from a worn-out dray-horse — a little tough, 
but quite as nourishing may be had for 20 cents, as the fillet 
from a Norman-fed bullock for 20 francs; both washed down 
by a bottle of wine, here costing six or eight cents, there all 
the way up to two or three dollars. A dime gives a man a wild, 
whirling waltz at a ball with a modest-looking g{r\, neat and trim 
in pretty shop garb, or he may pay all the way up to five dollars 



554 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

for no better waltzing in more aristocratic ball-rooms, but with a 
partner wearing silks and laces and painting on cheeks artistically- 
rose-tinted. Theatres abound in every quarter, all with fairly 
good acting, and jests, perhaps broad and not too chaste, for ten 
cents, or with no better wit but its viciousness sugar-coated, for 
prices ranging through all scales up to two or three dollars. 

If the idler be of scientific turn, he may skim lightly near the 
surface, and pick up a gentlemanly knowledge of any or all 
sciences dropped from learned lips in free-lecture rooms, or may 
delve deep into hidden lore in the richest of libraries, open to all, 
and then hear elucidations in the Sorbonne, and examine in open 
museums specimens, for which have been ransacked the bowels 
of the earth and the caves of the sea. Would he read as connois- 
seur, or study as student, the glories of Art ? Acres of canvas are 
spread before him, on which genius has depicted human passions 
or rivalled the beauteousness of nature, with glooms dug from 
cavernous depths, mellowness of tints borrowed from the rain- 
bow, or effulgent light plucked from the stars. Acres of forms 
pose in godlike mould, or writhe in demoniac agony in marble or 
bronze, into which the chisel's magic touch has breathed living 
souls. Would he study or amuse himself with human foibles and 
every-day human thought? in cafe and in crowded garden ; on 
working day thoroughfares or fete-day excursions, he can mingle 
with thousands who, intent upon their own enjoyments, exhibit 
their hearts and souls, as fully as skitting lambs show their inno- 
cence, or kittens display their frolicsomeness. No civilized peo- 
ple evince such debonair recklessness of others' opinions as do the 
French. Subtle and secretive in matters involving grave interests, 
they are very children when they have no dangerous motive to 
conceal. 

I spent a part of the autumn and winter of 1851-52 in Paris. 
My associates were largely of the student class, partly American 
and partly native. Some of my experiences would be amusing if 
I could narrate them, and some bordered upon the tragic. Louis 
Napoleon was president of the republic. I had no confidence in 
his republicanism, and declined a presentation to the " Little 
Prince," offered me through a charming young lady, daughter of 
our then minister, one of my distant Virginia cousins. Her name 
is now being made famous at home by her namesake and niece. 
My lack of confidence in Louis Napoleon was soon justified. The 
evening of December 1st was calm, and the sunset sky sweetly 
rose-tinted. The house in which I had apartments was on St. 
George's, near the one in Rue Lafitte in which the president was 
born. It was occupied by a large number of Italian patriots, 
refugees from Rome. From one I was taking lessons in his soft 
language. Early in the morning of the 2d, his tap came upon 
my door. Pale and excited, he told me that the city was in a 
state of siege, and that Caviagnac, Thiers, and other republican 



REVOLUTION OF DECEMBER, 1851. 555 

leaders were arrested and sent off to Ham and other fortresses. 
My blood boiled, and my tongue rattled off denunciations. " Tais 
toi, mon gargon," he said. " But I am not afraid, I am an Ameri- 
can." " C'est vrais, mais nous sommes — nous autres — Remains, 
and your words may be dangerous to us." I swallowed my 
coffee hurriedly and sallied forth. The boulevards close by were 
crowded by excited people. Soon a line of mounted lancers be- 
gan to pour up the broad avenue. There were 10,000 of them. 
Close by my side on the curb-stone stood a distinguished-looking 
lady. I asked her what were the feelings of the Parisians now. 
With a shrug of the shoulders and a sweet smile, she answered: 
"It is gratitude to Monsieur le Prince for this magnificent 
spectacle." Her words were so cold-blooded that I angrily re- 
torted : " C'est impossible ! " With sweet condescension she re- 
joined: "Monsieur est Americain, n'est pas? je suis Parisienne, 
mais je connais les Parisiennes; attendez les denouements." She 
was very beautiful, but for the moment I forgot my admiration 
and disliked her. 

Events afterward showed that she was right, and that my 
patriotic sympathies were all wasted. Rapidly the great streets 
were filled with soldiers, and news came of barricades in several 
localities. Afterwards, with a party of students, I started to get 
near Porte St. Martin, where a strong barricade was thrown up 
and fighting was going on. I stopped in a boutique (shop) to write 
a postscript in a letter I was about to post home. My friends got 
a little way ahead of me, and the crowd was so great that I could 
not overtake them. I got within sight of St. Martin, when an 
order ran down the boulevard to open every upper window. 
Some shots had come from behind closed blinds ; and im- 
mediately after another order ran along the line of soldiers to 
clear the streets. The crowd at first did not budge ; a rattle of 
musketry poured down towards us, and a cannon-ball crashed 
into a boutique window a few steps behind me. Then there was 
a rush to get away. I was carried along by the moving mass. 
Bits of plaster came down upon my head from upper walls upon 
which musket-balls were rattling. As Sam Weller said : " It was 
too exciting to be pleasant." I was glad to reach a cross street, 
into which I plunged, and made a detour so as to reach a point 
where I could cross the boulevard to get to my residence. This 
I could not do until I reached the Madeleine, over a mile off. 
The crowd rapidly vanished from the streets, as if by magic. 
When I crossed Rue Vivienne, there was not a person to be seen 
except the soldiers, 200 or 300 yards off at the boulevard's inter- 
section, who at that moment poured a volley adown the street. I 
thought I heard bullets whistling; when I had crossed Vivienne I- 
laughed at myself for imagining I had heard bullets, for I then 
felt sure the volleys were of blank cartridge. I afterwards found 
that the walls above the second story at that point had been 



55 6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

riddled with balls, and more than probably some of them came 
while I was there. It was almost impossible to remain in my 
room, so great was the fever of excitement burning in me. At 
one time I was in a pack at the mouth of Rue Lafitte when some 
firing was heard up the boulevard ; we were ordered to disperse 
with an " allez voiis en!' We paid no attention to it. Then 
came a stern " Va f en ! " We knew that meant business, especially 
when a platoon of infantry was seen rapidly approaching. I was 
next the boulevard. The crowd rushed back, leaving my rear 
open to the enemy. I ran, putting my hands in front of me, and 
then drawing them back, as if swimming. Each motion put two 
or three Frenchmen, not so strong as I, behind me. I thus made 
a living dreas^-work to my rear, of probably a hundred, when the 
crash of musketry was heard. There were screams. How many 
were hit I did not hear, but I soon saw two men on shutters borne 
up the street. 

St. Martin's barricade fell and was captured, and at dusk, with 
a little lady friend of our concierge, I went out to reconnoitre. 
The public were permitted to cross the boulevard only at Rue 
Montmartre. Mounted sentinels were moving back and forth, 
while the mass of cavalry were bivouacked in the centre of the 
broad avenue. We had crossed, and were stooping down to 
examine what we took to be blood in the gutter. All at once I 
felt something cold touch my cheek. I looked up; the barrel of 
a horse pistol was within two inches of my nose, and the mounted 
owner ordered us on. I need not say that we obeyed with exceed- 
ing alacrity. I said some things at that time bordered on the 
tragic. My friends who got lost from me on the way to St. Mar- 
tin were unable to reach a cross street when the firing com- 
menced. Chaupan of New Orleans went through a hole in a 
boutique shutter, made by a cannon-ball, and hid himself in the 
deserted house. Jones of Kentucky, got into a shop with a 
crowd, soldiers rushed in and gave him a sabre cut on his hand. 
Metcalffe of Mississippi, finding the bullets were whistling dan- 
gerously, dropped with face down to the ground close to the 
house-walls and lay still. Soldiers in file passed along; one gave 
him a kick, saying: "■ C est fait pour lui" (he is done for). Poor 
Orrick played Falstaff, but dreading the while lest they might put 
in a finishing touch. All were more or less greatly endangered. 
Ap. Catesby Jones had a leg broken in two places below the 
knee, and was for months in a critical condition. One of my 
Italian friends appeared no more in our house, and his com- 
panions were sad and silent. Some gay young ladies lamented 
the places lately filled by student friends (French) in a boarding- 
house I sometimes frequented in the Latin quarter. The bulletins 
set down the killed at a dozen or so. I knew of nearly that many 
myself. I talked the other day with an old soldier; he said there 
were l,ooo killed, most of them idle spectators. In February I 



CHANGES IN PARIS. 557 

went eastward, and did not return for nearly a year. I then saw 
Louis Napoleon drive by with a guard of honor from the inaugura- 
tion of the Strasburg station — he was Emperor. Handkerchiefs 
waved and " Vive I'Empereur " rang along the gay boulevards. I 
remembered the words of my chance lady companion, and had to 
confess that the French were not ready for a republic. " L'em- 
pire c'est le paix," said the scion of Bonapartism. Time has shown 
that " L'empire " was the synonym of glittering imbecility, of ex- 
travagant and dishonest beautification of Paris, and of national 
decadence. 

France is now gnashing her teeth in rage and vainly hoping for 
a day of revenge. Appealing to this feeling, Imperialists and 
Royalists are joining hands with extremists calling themselves 
Republicans, to destroy all conservative free rule in the country. 
Can she govern herself ? Is she not again seeking a dictator's 
heel to tread upon the necks of her people? It seems so, for it 
looks as if Boulanger is about to be mounted on horseback. The 
empire certainly, while rocking the people into a dream, whose 
attractive visions were self-seeking corruption, luxurious vanity, 
and national enervation, robed Paris in garments of beauty. 
Magnificent boulevards and broad streets were cut and opened 
into every quarter of the city. They were lined with splendid 
edifices, flattering the pride of the citizens, and at the same time 
manacling their limbs. In '52 a few upturned omnibuses and 
heaped paving-stones from 100 or 200 feet of adjoining streets, in 
a half hour, made a barricade which, defended by a half-armed 
rabble, held in check thousands of well-armed and disciplined sol- 
diers. Now a Gatling gun or a field-piece discharging grape can 
sweep a mob from any quarter of the capital. Law and order can 
thus be preserved, and so can the rule of an usurper. Mob 
violence in Paris has committed the most horrible crimes of 
modern times, but the love of ease and luxury, the greed of gold 
and its purchased splendors, made the mob a possibility, and 
awakening the sympathies of lovers of liberty throughout the 
world, has thrown a covering mantle over the mad acts of an op- 
pressed and cheated people, and has apotheosized into heroes 
men whose deeds in other lands would have been called demoniac 
crimes. 

The opening of these streets and improving them into the beau- 
tifiers of his capital enabled the emperor to enrich himself and 
his pets. A new street was planned, contiguous property was 
purchased quietly, the new avenue was built up ; values were 
enhanced many fold. Imperial minions were enriched, and the 
city itself frequently gained largely to its exchequer. The open- 
ing of the Rue de I'Opera, a short street, I am told, netted to the 
municipality 11 millions of money. These improvements are 
still being made by the republic, wonderfully to the beauty and 
largely to the health of the capital. Although during my former 



558 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

visits I ran over oftentimes and knew Paris well, yet to-day I 
cannot recognize many of its most frequented localities. Where 
I formerly squeezed through narrow tortuous streets, now I find 
broad and magnificent avenues. Old monuments, churches, and 
halls, formerly half hidden by dingy buildings reeking in slime 
and dirt, now lift into fine sky lines from pretty squares and on 
wide airy thoroughfares. Old public buildings are reconstructed, 
but some of the most historic arches, towers, and fountains are 
retained and made parts of the new and splendid structures, 
retaining thus enough of the old to endear them to the lover of 
the traditions of the past. A bloused stone-cutter the other day 
laid down his chisel and pointed out to me with pride " les 
souvenirs historiques " being built into the old " halles au ble." 
These old remains are very dear to the ouvrier of the Faubourg 
St. Antoine. Every Parisian workman is deep-tinged with patriot- 
ism and with love for the traditional glory of his country and city, 
and one is constantly surprised by the grandeur and dignity of 
tone and language immediately assumed by the hard-handed 
toiler, when he mentions his country's past and his hopes for 
its future. But he is impatient of the slow progress of steady 
growth, mistrusts the statesman who would cement as he builds, 
and is calmly avvaiting for to-morrow, though knowing that the 
certain to-morrow may not come for a year or a decade. He 
chafes at delay, and is ready to applaud a charlatan who talks 
glibly of doing to-day, and puts into the saddle a self-seeking bab- 
bler who may the next week ride rough-shod over his country's 
liberty. Not only the hard-working toiler, but the dreaming 
student is ready to take these chances, for the latter knows that, 
in the excitement to come, he may ride upon the crest, as the 
froth whitens upon a storm-driven sea. 

The Sunday after we arrived, Willie and I visited St. Cloud, 
never rebuilt since it was fired by an ill-directed ball from Fort 
Valerien, aimed at the Germans, who were encamped on these 
grounds during the memorable siege. To the glory of the Ger- 
mans in that terrible war, it may be proudly claimed by them 
that they used every exertion to prevent the destruction of 
monuments and works of art. After wandering about the park 
and enjoying its exquisite views, we accidentally stumbled through 
a park gate into a little alley of Sevres, marked " Rue Gambetta." 
The lane ran through large walled gardens; the vines covering the 
walls made our walk sweet and pretty. There was, however, one 
unpretentious white stuccoed house against the little street, with a 
few small windows. The upper wall was all covered with a dia- 
mond-shaped trellis for ivy. The vine was, however, all dead, and 
the cement walls, as high as could be reached, were almost dingy 
with pencil-writings. Looking over the high garden wall, I no- 
ticed the side of the house was covered by a large Kentucky 
creeper, all bright in large trumpet-shaped flowers. This was the 



LEON GAMBETTA. 559 

first of this old home piant, rarely seen in Europe, I had seen for 
years. It caused us to pause and look for some time. A gen- 
tleman (he was the only one, except ourselves in the street) passing 
and seeing our apparent interest, told us the house was Gambetta's, 
and was the one in which he died. It was strange that we should 
thus have been attracted by this house, which at once assumed for us 
an intense interest. I found that what I had taken for idle scrib- 
blings on a deserted house, were words of affection and admira- 
tion written by the statesman's admirers. "Vive Gambetta, the 
people's friend"; "Brave Gambetta, the country's defender"; 
" Get well, Gambetta, thy country needs thee " ; " God preserve 
thee, Gambetta, the citizens demand thee." These and hundreds 
such are written on the wall, some of them when probably he lay 
upon his death-bed. We rang the gate-bell, rang again and again ; 
no one came ; we rattled with our canes upon closed window- 
shutters. The prolonged barking of a little dog in an upper 
room showed us he was alone. We went off for a lunch ; learned 
that the house was in charge of a concierge, and that it once be- 
longed to Balzac. This gave an additional reason for us to get 
into it ; therefore, after an hour or more we returned. The guar- 
dian was still absent. We determined to scale the garden wall, 
and in so doing I strained my hip, and am yet somewhat lame 
and unable to do much walking, and had to keep my room for 
several days. We succeeded, however, in getting into the gar- 
den, where Leon Gambetta had often walked ; gathered some 
horse-chestnuts from a tree overhanging his door. The brilliant 
orator may often have sat beneath its shade. Here, too, were the 
fine old trees under which Balzac may have written or meditated 
some of his brilliant romances. I was lame, but did not regret 
it, for though not in the room, we were at the house and in the 
gardens of one of the most brilliant of Frenchmen — the stay and 
prop of Continental liberty and the friend of humanity, one of 
the most striking characters of this prolific century. 

To write properly of Paris would require more space than is 
now permitted me. I went each morning to the great central 
markets. I am a believer in the grape, and went for fresh chasse- 
las and to enjoy the bustle of the early sales and the good- 
humored gayety of the market-people. These market-sheds are 
of great extent, all undermined with spacious vaults, in which 
what fails to be sold in the morning may be coolly stored till the 
next day. The early sales are by wholesale and made by auc- 
tion. Lots of butter and of cheese, hampers of vegetables and 
fruits, carcases of meat, and masses of fish, are knocked down 
rapidly to the retailer and are rapidly carried off by regular por- 
ters in great broad hats to protect the head from grease and 
drip. Each porter takes a tab, carries his load to another part 
of the market where the purchaser pays and gets a ticket to 
enable him to pass the bounds. There are regular auctioneers, 



S6o A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

and the business is done quickly. The retail purchasers are 
largely women. The wholesaling is over at nine o'clock. Then 
the retailer invites the passer with compliments to purchase. 
" Voila, monsieur, a fish for your charming wife." " See this bou- 
quet, your pretty lady-love will dote on you if you take it to her." 
" Here, monsieur, is a quail for your sick daughter." " Look at 
this live fish, just the thing for your guests this evening." " Buy 
this beautiful wreath of immortelles, just the thing for your hand- 
some family tomb at Pere la Chasse." As we walk among the 
stalls of different articles, all in their respective quarters, old 
women ply the passer, and often with compliments my modesty 
prevents my noting. One sees much of Parisian human nature in 
these places. Large markets are held in the several quarters of 
the city on fixed days, generally twice a week for each locality. The 
broad promenade spaces of several boulevards have sockets in the 
walks into which posts are set, and then rods run along them, 
making covered awnings for the stalls. The awnings are erected 
the evening before, and after the morning sales are over the locali- 
ties are quickly cleaned, and in an hour no one would suspect 
the pretty streets had been so used. The market people are 
thus able to reach different parts of the city through the week. 
Cabbages and other vegetables are brought into the city pro- 
tected by their outer leaves. Purchasers strip these off and drop 
them at once. Tons of this refuse lie about the markets, but are, 
immediately after the market closes, carted off by public teams. 
But I must forbear further writing upon this great city. I could 
write on and fill half a volume and write only of what has come 
to my individual notice. 

We left Paris the 15th, via Dieppe for London. Caught a 
glimpse of the old cathedral at Rouen, but did not halt, ran 
through some beautiful scenery in Normandy, with sweetly 
sequestered homes and quaint old mills; had a smooth sail to 
New Haven, and at ten o'clock at night I felt that strange 
oppression I always suffer from when entering huge London. 



CHAPTER LII. 

LONDON— GREAT AND VICIOUS LONDON— ITS FOGS— HOSPITALITY 

IN 1851 AND 1888— TORTWORTH COURT AND 

BERKELEY CASTLE. 

London, November 2, 1888. 

When I arrived a young man in London many years ago, I felt 
overpowered at my littleness in this mighty human hive, and was so 
green that I had not even thought of a hotel to which I might go. ^ 
When the cabman banged the door with the demand " Where, sir?"' 
I almost sank back in despair. But the thought flashed across my 
brain that I was in this man's power, and that dire might be the ^ 
consequence. I felt it would never do to let him know my utter 
ignorance of the ways of the world and above all of London. Sa 
with an air of intense composure I answered " Golden Cross." I 
did not know in what part of the city it was, nor what sort of 
house, but I had lately been reading the veracious account of the 
memorable excursion of that wonderful man Mr. Samuel Pickwick 
and his friends, and I recalled at the moment that it was from this 
tavern " the club " had started. I found the place comfortable 
and have since several times made it my temporary abode, for it 
is at Charing Cross, the very centre of the city. From its door 
one can mount a " bus " for any and every quarter of the metrop- 
olis. We are in it now and make daily journeys about the vast 
town. 

I will not attempt a letter descriptive of London to bring it to 
the reader's mind; to do so properly would require hundreds 
of pages. Unlike Paris it has no salient characteristics which can 
be named as peculiar to and therefore properly descriptive of it. 
Here are all things and all manner of all things, so mingled 
together that to paint it, the pencil must be dipped in all colors 
and in all tints, and the artist must know all things and how 
to arrange them. This globe of ours is round, its surface is cov- 
ered with earth and water ; the sun lights it by day and the stars 
shine upon it by night. This would be as properly an analysis of 
the globe's characteristic, as any thing I could say of this vast 
cauldron of humanity in a simple letter would be a description of 
it. I might say it has four millions of people, — the mind can 
hardly grasp the fact. Better probably would it be to state that 
the ten largest cities of America united into one would not sum 

561 



5 62 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

up its complement. Gather all the people of the great State 
of New York and pour them into London emptied, and there 
'would be vacant places left and room for those of a few of our 
nine by ten commonwealths. But what is more, the great Empire 
State even with its huge city could not furnish the ingredients to 
make up the medley of human nature here to be found. Here 
man soars aloft and looks with undazzled eye into the brightness 
of the stars, and here sinks into the lowest vortex of depravity ; 
here he vies with the gods in sublimity, and here revels in the 
companionship of the most loa:thsome reptile. He touches a 
chord that sings in ethereal cadences throughout the spheres, and 
yet commits crimes so hideous that a convict escaped from Hades 
would hardly plead guilty to their doing. Here is the centre of 
the world of wealth — the very heart whose pulsations vibrate to 
the farthest corner of the world, and here squalid hunger is 
gaunt from very starvation. Piled up on a few acres are the shin- 
ing coins of the whole world, or the debentures which could bring 
in all, and then would bankrupt the very mines in the rock ; and 
yet within a few minutes' walk there is the home of starving want 
and racking misery. Here countless millions could be raised 
in a day to carry light into the heart of the dark continent, or to 
equip armies and squadrons to destroy human slavery and its 
trade ; and yet close by girls are being daily sold to vice, and in- 
fantine innocence is taught to steal and to commit crime as a 
science. Here thousands of pure, good and able men and women 
are daily banded together to lighten the load down-weighting poor 
humanity and to bring it into communion with its God. To reach 
their place of meeting those same men and women pass by quar- 
ters into which they would not dare to go without the eye of 
a policeman constantly upon them, and where murders are 
now being committed in manner so hellish and for reasons so 
utterly unaccountable, that the world stands aghast with horror. 
Nothing is so good, no idea so sublime, that the performers of the 
one, and the votaries of the other are not here to be found in vast 
and earnest numbers ; nothing so vicious or so hideous, no thought 
or passion so bestial and degrading, that thousands cannot here be 
found to delight in performing the one, or to reek and wallow in 
the other. Paris is the epitome of certain traits of human nature 
— London is the epitome of the world and of all traits of human 
nature. 

Nature seems herself every now and then to grow shocked 
at the possibility of its depravity and tries to cover it over with 
an impenetrable gloom. A London fog is the one thing typical 
of this place, and of it alone. It is not fog as understood else- 
where, but a mist ground up with soot — a mist coated with dirt 
and rime ; a pall settled down to shut out the heavens and 
to hide the city from the spirits of the air and the stars in 
the sky. Coming from the " Lodge of Israel " at Cannon Street 



TORTWORTH COURT. 563 

Hotel at midnight, I found the city was shrouded in fog ; I 
mounted the deck of an omnibus to have the full benefit of the 
thing. Coming out of Ludgate Hill the driver got so bewildered 
that he lost his way in the little open space not 200 feet across, 
and instead of going straight into Fleet Street turned at right 
angles, and did not discover his mistake until he was about to 
enter Blackfriars Bridge, where there was a little opening in the 
fog, and yet he had been on this line for 10 or 15 years. We 
frequently could not see the lights on vehicles meeting us until 
they were bumped into us. The fog is often in patches where all 
is nearly impenetrable and the lamps are hardly visible across 
a narrow street, and yet 100 or 200 yards off one can see with tol- 
erable distinctness. I was reading in my room (it has three good 
windows on the street) at li o'clock, suddenly the sun went out, 
and I could not distinguish the sky line of the building across the 
way not 60 feet off. I groped my way down stairs before the gas 
was lighted ; drivers on cabs and 'buses were calling out to each 
other so as to learn their respective positions, and men and boys 
were offering their services to convey pedestrians to their destina- 
tions. People often accept such services even when within a few 
hundred yards of their homes. The city seems to be trying to 
hide itself in sheer disgust for its own misdeeds. 

When I was a young man I was a breeder in Kentucky of short- 
horns, and going abroad visited the famous herds of England. I 
went to Tortworth Court, the seat of the Earl of Ducie in Glouces- 
tershire, to see his celebrated " Dutchess" cattle, and was intro- 
duced to his lordship by the bull, " Fourth Duke of York." I was 
treated with great kindness by the family and afterwards spent 
some weeks at Brahan Castle, north of Inverness, in Scotland, which 
Lord Ducie had taken for the season. His son, Lord Moreton (now 
Lord Ducie), of my own age, was a fisherman and supplied the table 
with salmon ; I furnished it with venison from the great forest, 
well stocked with fallow-deer and roebuck, and played billiards 
with the kind earl, somewhat an invalid. He died a few months 
afterwards, and the present earl, has always been off yachting 
when I have since been in England. We have kept up an occa- 
sional correspondence. Learning we were here now, he wrote for 
us to come to Tortworth for a visit. A charming run on the 
Great Western Road through sweet home scenery along the 
Thames — at times rushing with a speed of 70 miles an hour, — 
through picturesque Bath, brought us to Bristol, thence an hour 
northward carried us to Charfield, the' Tortworth station. I wish 
I could write of the splendid hospitality found in the interior of a 
great English country-seat; but will content myself by saying the 
guest is as free as if he were in a fine hotel. He can walk or ride ; 
can talk or write ; can play tennis or take a row in pretty lakes ; 
can stroll among herds of fine short-horns or watch gay phea- 
sants wandering within 100 yards of the house ; can look upon 



564 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

old family pictures, or study in the library or in the museum, in 
which is a fine collection of old English and some Roman coins, 
nearly all dug up on the grounds about the park; can take a pipe 
or a cigar in the smoking-room ; can go through the park, in which 
are specimens of the best American trees, all labelled. In short, 
can do as he pleases and have a good time. Tortworth residence 
is very large, containing 50 odd sleeping-rooms, and fine halls, all of 
Bath stone and Elizabethian in style. The grounds or home place 
contain 4,000 acres and are very beautiful, most admirably kept up, 
— in fact I could see nothing out of order. 

The present Lord Moreton has inherited his grandfather's love 
of short-horns and fine pigs, and is selling many to go to the 
Argentine Republic. His father I do not think knows a short- 
horn from a mountain tow-head, but is great on arboriculture and 
yachting. I had one familiar acquaintance, an old chesnut-tree 
about 18 feet in diameter and written of as old several centuries 
ago. It is not much more than a living shell or tall hollow stump, 
supported by a huge ivy which keeps it staid and green at winter 
in its vast old age. It is one of the oldest British trees ; the ivy 
and the balmy climate may keep it alive for centuries yet to come. 
The Gloucestershire hills stretch near by, making a pretty 
outline. On one of the highest points stands a tall tower or 
column, the monument of Tyndale, who first translated into 
English the New Testament. This was his native home. 

Six miles from Tortworth is the oldest inhabited stronghold in 
England — Berkeley Castle. It is a solid old keep with massive 
walls, deeply marked by cannon-balls thrown against it by 
Cromwell. Lord Fitz Hardinge, the owner, acted as cicerone for 
us and showed us its old rooms and many relics of long ago. 
There was the room in which Edward the Second was murdered, 
meeting the most ignoble death ever inflicted upon a king. His 
bed is kept as he used it. There was Elizabeth's room with its 
massive wooden bolts, barring out intruders from the virgin queen 
and the bed upon which she slept when a guest at the castle. 
Here were her candlesticks, her perfume bottles, and other pretty 
things, and a beautiful little prayer-book, written and illumined by 
her own fair hands. If I remember rightly, they were dainty and 
deserved the pride she had in them. These and other of her 
ornaments were given by her to one of her maids-of-honor, a 
daughter of this old house. 

We looked into the kitchen, in which a meal was being pre- 
pared, with old pot-racks and other kitchen furniture the same as 
used centuries ago. The great deer park was formerly about the 
castle, but the noble proprietor moved it some distance away, 
because his good dame found it so easy to kill fat bucks to load the 
table when Queen Bess was her guest. The present lord is the 
master of the Gloucestershire hounds and had just returned from 
a hunt when we arrived. He had gained a good appetite from his 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 565 

hard riding, but left his lunch table to take us around, and 
munched biscuits while he showed us his rare old curios. He 
looked the typical fox-hunting Englishman, tough as a pine knot, 
and as careless of appearances and as independent as a wood- 
sawyer, Willie got some nice old coins at Tortworth, dug up 
about Tortworth Court. We left the hospitable house with much 
regret, and leave for Liverpool to sail to-morrow on the Alaska. 



CHAPTER LIII. 

OUR HOME RUN— NIAGARA— WE LOSE THE RACE 
WITH THE SUN. 

Homeward Bound, November 15, 1888. 

Our passage across the Atlantic was uneventful and not un- 
pleasant, although it was rough and stormy. Twice the wind rose 
to the dignity of hard gales, and the ocean greyhound Alaska 
rolled tremendously, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks. 
The captain said when we started that she did not know how to 
roll, and I think acquired a dislike for me because I congratulated 
him afterwards on her aptness in taking lessons. We reached 
Sandy Hook at night and anchored to await the tide. I fear I 
am not orthodox in my patriotism, for I did not work up any in- 
tense sentiment when I went on deck in the morning, and saw 
America after so many months of absence. I did lift my hat, 
however, and with deep respect said " My native land, good 
morning." I felt a sort of regret that our journeyings were 
ended ; I was anxious to reach home to see loved ones, and once 
more to greet my friends. I looked back over the sea ; there was 
a thread of light marking the way we had come, and beyond on 
mountain and plain, on hill and valley, were many a charming 
scene now lost to me forever. 

We halted in New York two days, that Willie might look at our 
own commercial metropolis while recollections of Old-World cities 
were fresh in his mind. 

I am making notes of this my last letter on the M. C. railroad as 
we pass through quiet Michigan. A little link of a hundred miles is 
yet to be made, to close up the girdle we have been making around 
the world. It has been a long and somewhat tortuous one : now 
lying on the equator, then looped up over the Arctic Circle ; here we 
were running with fieet-footed old Sol ; there doubling upon our 
tracks we made a couple of thousand and more miles with the early 
dawn ever in our faces. The track we have made would measure 
about 45,000 miles. In all of that vast distance we have not met 
with a single accident. The two boys have each had a day or two of 
slight indisposition. I have not been sick a single day. We have 
sweltered in tropical heats, and the sun has shot down upon our 
heads burning arrows ; we have eaten all kinds of food and par- 
taken wantonly of the fruits of every land, and for several days ia 

566 



COLD BATHS. 567 

Finland and Norway were wet from morning till night. We took 
with us a well supplied medicine chest ; with the exception of a 
few quinine pills taken out, we bring it back as it started. Just 
before sailing from Vancouver I read in a newspaper the state- 
ment of an eminent French physician, that he had for a year 
or more poured each morning cold water over the back of his neck 
and had escaped colds. He did not say that it was the cause of 
his exemption, but recommended its trial. I have not failed to so 
do a single morning in fifteen months, and have not had a single 
cold. I could not persuade the boys to follow my example, and 
they have been frequently enrheumed. It is worth trying. In 
the far East we adopted the Indian mode of bathing, that is by 
pouring cold water over the person, and at the same time rubbing 
one's self. It is the simplest of all baths and perhaps the best, for 
it permits free exercise while bathing, and thereby prevents the 
chill so often dangerously accompanying a cold souse or the 
steady shock of the shower, and is greatly more refreshing than 
the sponge bath. It is economical and convenient, and one can 
obtain all the refreshing benefits of a cold morning bath and not 
consume over a pailful of water, especially if using a broad flat 
tub to stand in. Where water is in limited supply it is the 
thing, and for persons of small means, who can by it have the 
beneficial morning refreshment without the expense of a bath- 
room. A broad tin tub costs but little. We often amused 
ourselves watching mothers in India bathe their naked little 
ones from babyhood up to ten or more years of age, at 
street hydrants in cities, or near the tanks in villages. The 
European bathroom throughout the far East is a small room 
with an inclined cemented floor and cemented wainscoting. In 
this is a tub, small or large according to the ability to get water, 
and a tin dipper, usually an old preserved meat-can. Since reaching 
Singapore we have rarely missed our morning pour, for nearly 
everywhere we could get a broad foot-bath. To this and to fruit 
diet I ascribe much of our excellent health. In India our guide- 
books cautioned against the free use of fruit. We partook pro- 
fusely of all kinds, in all localities and at all times. For nearly 
five months we rarely failed eating for breakfast a fill of " pomolos," 
the shaddock of Florida. Some say it is an antidote to malaria. 
By peeling off the inner skin it is a delightful fruit. A little of 
the inner skin gives a taste of quinine, and is possibly possessed 
of its virtues. 

A night whirl carried us from New York across the Empire 
State, and the next morning gave us a view of the world's wonder 
and America's pride and glory — Niagara. It would furnish a fit- 
ting climacteric for this, my story of a voyage around the world. 
For here one looks upon the very embodiments of relentless force 
and indomitable energy — of irresistible and eternal motion. 
Here for untold ages there has not been one moment of rest — not 



568 A RACE WITH THE SUN. 

a fleeting instant of silence. During countless centuries the 
majestic roar, deep and solemn as the stertorous breathings of a 
boundless universe, has not during the flash of a second been 
once hushed, or has ever modulated its awful tone. Here is 
grandeur and sublimity, but yet more than all, beauty without 
stint. A distinguished Briton once wrote with supercilious con- 
tempt of an untutored Yankee, who, after looking upon Niagara, 
exclaimed: " How beautiful ! " The Yankee, however, was not 
devoid of ethical refinement. America's mighty cataract has 
all the elements of the beautiful, but not all of the grand. It 
does not arouse a feeling of fear and dread. Mountain billows 
rushing before a howling storm, seem ready to engulf one who is 
in their path. Huge snow-clad peaks or towering rocky pinnacles 
cutting a far upper sky, looking as if their distant heights were 
the props of the eternal throne, seem ready to topple upon and 
to crush the beholder. These are awful — fearful — grand. Words 
of tenderness die upon the lover's lips in their presence. But 
Niagara wins a loving look and woos a cooing word ; it mellows 
the heart, and quickens a gentle pulse ; it is the very trysting 
place for lovers ; its marvellous beauties reach the heart, and the 
hearts of thousands furnish a better criticism than the learned 
aestheticism of the schooled critics. It is grand, and sublime, and 
yet more gloriously beautiful. I never go to or from the East, 
without a feeling that I have lost something if I have not had one 
look at it. Even the hurried view from Suspension Bridge and 
the ten minutes from the look-out of the M. C. railroad repay a 
good part of the ticket's cost. 

We have but a hundred miles more to make, and our journeyings 
will be ended. I look back with regret, for the joys of the past 1 5| 
months can never again be mine. We have seen many lands and 
many peoples. We have been happy, and I have endeavored 
through these letters to make my friends at home partakers of 
our happiness. The endeavor has been beneficial to myself. It 
has forced me to an intensely close observation of every thing, 
and I hope to somewhat accurate conclusions. I have reached 
such conclusions honestly, but have made no pretensions to pro- 
found researches. I have written of things as they appeared to 
me and as they would most probably have appeared to my readers 
had they been in my place. At least I have endeavored to let 
them see through my eyes. Much that I have written may seem 
trivial, but the monarch mountains of the world are but aggrega- 
tions of tiny atoms. A man's life and a country's history are only 
collected masses of countless little things. A fossil bone and a 
carbon leaf gave Agassiz food for months of study, and from 
them he fashioned a beast of monster dimensions and revealed a 
planet of emerald brightness. Iron filings are dull and lustreless 
dirt, a magnet causes them to assume forms of perfect beauty. 
We look through our window upon the fog, it is cold, damp, and 



HOME AGAIN. 569 

dreary. The frost in the night weaves upon the panes patterns 
so exquisite that the daintiest lace worker can only tamely imitate 
them. Many little things — many homely things in distant lands 
have been revelations to us. I have striven, dear readers, to lay 
them pleasantly before you, that you might see what I saw, and as 
I have seen. I have felt you were my constant companions, and 
have been happy in the companionship. If you have enjoyed my 
company as I have taken pleasure in yours, I shall be more than 
repaid for my labor. 

For nearly two years we have known no winter, our world has 
all the while been mantled in green. I look out of the car win- 
dows on Michigan's low hills and gentle slopes; all is leafless and 
of russet tone. Cattle are cropping the embrowned grass, or look 
up mild-eyed as we pass, and chew the cud of sweet content. 
Their sides are sleek, for they have revelled in the summer's 
green ; they can bear the wintry blast and look forward to the 
coming spring. We, too, have had many long months of glorious 
summer. In our memories are garnered what we have gathered, 
to be food for thought in the winter of declining years. Will 
that winter be followed by an emerald spring? We will hope and 
live, and will live in hope. 

Again I look out of our window. Clouds are gathering over 
the sky ; the curtain of the far west is dyed in purple and salmon. 
Through a cloud rift the rounded low-down sun is bloody red. 
Nearly 500 times has he run his course since we started in our 
race with him around the world. He has reached our home and 
passed it, and we are not yet quite there. He dips his rim and is 
gone. He has won the race. To him and to you good-bye. 



THE END. 



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4 



